Page:Maud Howe - A Newport Aquarelle.djvu/79

 A more subtle and disastrous influence is wielded by the woman who is bent on the scientific analysis of the various effects produced by the tender passion on men of different character and nature.

She has little pigeon-holes marked with different characteristic names, and into these she classifies every new specimen. She is apt soon to discover that the pigeon-holes may be very few, and that nearly all the men she meets will fit exactly into one or another of them.

When she has arrived at this conclusion she is satisfied; two or three good specimens of every sort having been coolly analyzed and properly pigeon-holed.

It is variety, and not quantity, she desires; and, having already become quite familiar with the manner in which a certain species of the genus homo is affected by the greatest of passions, she allows many possible victims to pass by without an effort or desire to add them to her collection; but if a specimen