Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/230

 Those gestures of the female intelligence which we may call intuitive afford her an advantage in her intercourse with the other sex. Notice how Shakspeare's women read the men and understand them better than the other men do. Those who are most interested to know the disposition of their associates are not the first as a matter of course to discover it; but it is frequently, and in grave junctures, revealed by the swift instinct of some woman. Men are not conscious when they are observed by women, because the survey is made so silently. We are as little conscious of the unobtrusive forenoon which envelops every act and feature and sets them in plainness. The glance of an observing woman does not pierce a man at any spot: it surrounds the whole of him at once impalpably. Or sometimes it is one swift flit of her face across your own, like the shadow of a bird's wing. It is gone before you can declare that she looked at you. But the glance was an estimate: it cost her scarce a second to peruse every cubic inch of you, and audit a hundred years of ancestry. The glance is withdrawn, and goes into obscurity, like an instantaneous sun-picture, there to deepen into distinctness. Almost every woman has set up a gallery of these impressions, which she shows rarely, and to her trusted intimates alone. But there you are preserved,—a simpleton, a rowdy, a gallant, a rogue, or a gentleman; one who respects, who honors, or who thinks lightly of her; one who is capable of valuing or of depreciating; one whose hand is clean enough to touch or nettlesome to roughen her delicacy; one whose secret and unspoken effluence