Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/231

 is salubrious, or somewhat doubtful, to be kept at bay, to be considered while you are the most profuse of honorable sentences. In the long run, you will generally succeed in justifying all her silent estimates. She took you unawares, in a moment when your lip did not move with your tongue, or the eye motioned to her something dubious, or the whole face was a daybreak of clarity and honor. Ponder well, and lend it second-thoughts, when a woman bids you, upon the motion of her instinct, be cautious—or be confiding, be profuse or chary, be still over-ears in love or cured of that distemper. To a young man the freedom of a good woman's estimate of other men supplements the university; for he is a pupil who is fathomed previous to being taught.

Are our steps dogged then, and all our proceedings watched by non-commissioned detectives, who enjoy the immense advantage of being born in every house, and furnished with a passport into every other? Is a badge concealed in every reticule, to be displayed when the occasion comes to arrest us, which may be at the moments of our critical feelings, when confidence, and not exposure, is vital to us? A fine woman has not the consciousness that belongs to spies: she is guiltless of the act and the intent to watch us. Men deliberately set themselves to the work of scrutiny, and pay out all the line they have to fathom an associate, and bring up his mud or gold-sand sticking to the sinker. It does not always reach the grounds of his being. But clear-headed women envelop other natures as the air which simply exists to drench all objects through their pores, by the stress of