ou nay.

Keene saw his advantage, but was far too wise to follow it up then. The
weaker sex, as a rule, are acute but not very close reasoners; they mix
up their majors and minors with a charming recklessness; and, if
innocent of nothing else, are generally guiltless of a syllogism. It
follows that, in the course of an argument, it is easy enough to
entangle them in their talk. When such a chance occurs, don't come down
on your pretty antagonist with "I thought you said so and so," but be
politic as well as generous, and pass it by. They will do more justice
to your self-denial than they would have done to your dialectic talents.
Corinna loves to be contradicted, but hates to be convinced, and dreads
no monster so much as a short-horned--dilemma. She may forgive the first
offense as inadvertent, but "one more such victory and you are lost."
Think how often clemency has succeeded where severity would have failed.
What did that discreet Eastern emir, when he found his fair young wife
sleeping in a garden, where she had no earthly business to be? He laid
his drawn sabre softly across her neck, and retired without breaking her
slumbers. The cold blade was the first thing Zuleika felt when she woke;
I can not guess what her sensations were; but when she gave the weapon
back to her solemn lord, she pressed her rosy lips thrice on the blue
steel, and made a vow that she most probably kept; and Hussein Bey
never was happier, than when he drew her back to his broad breast,
looking into her face silently with his calm, grave smile.

I fancy our sisters enter into an argument with more simple good faith
and eagerness than we are wont to indulge in; so that it is probably
easier to tease and exasperate them, which is amusing enough while it
lasts. But no doubt it hurts them sometimes more than we are aware of;
and, after all, breaking a butterfly on the wheel is poor pastime, and
not a very athletic sport. The glory, too, to be won is so small that it
scarcely compensates for the pain we inflict, and may, perchance,
eventually _feel_. Is Achilles inclined to be proud of the strength of
his arm, or the keenness of his falchion, as he grovels in the dust at
the slain Amazon's side? Nay, he would give half his laurels to be able
to close that awful gaping wound--to see the proud lips soften for a
moment from their immutable scorn--to detect the faintest tremor in the
long white limbs that never will stir again.

The solemnity of the