Perhaps the best illustration of the female habit of swearing that facts occurred because they usually occurred, was exhibited in the Twitchell murder trial in Philadelphia, cited in Wellman's "Art of Cross-Examination." The defendant had killed his wife with a blackjack, and having dragged her body into the back yard, carefully unbolted the gate leading to the adjacent alley and, retiring to the house, went to bed. His purpose was to create the impression that she had been murdered by some one from outside the premises. To carry out the suggestion, he bent a poker and left it lying near the body smeared with blood. In the morning the servant girl found her mistress and ran shrieking into the street. At the trial she swore positively that she was first obliged to unbolt the door in order to get out. Nothing could shake her testimony, and she thus unconsciously negatived the entire value of the defendant's adroit precautions. He was justly convicted, although upon absolutely erroneous testimony. The old English lawyers occasionally rejected the evidence of women on the ground that they are "frail." But the exclusion of women as witnesses in the old days was not for psychological reasons, nor did it originate from a critical study of the probative value of their testimony. Though the conclusions to which women frequently jump may usually be shown by careful interrogation to be founded upon observation of actual fact, their habit of stating inferences often leads them to claim knowledge of the impossible--"wiser in [their] own conceit than seven men that can render a reason." In a very recent case where a clever thief had been convicted of looting various apartments in New York City of over eighty thousand dollars' worth of jewelry, the female owners were summoned to identify their property. The writer believes that in every instance these ladies were absolutely ingenuous and intended to tell the absolute truth. Each and every one positively identified various of the loose stones found in the possession of the prisoner as her own. This was the case even when the diamonds, emeralds and pearls had no distinguishing marks at all. It was a human impossibility actually to identify any such objects, and yet these eminently respectable and intelligent gentlewomen swore positively that they could recognize their jewels. They drew the inference merely that as the prisoner had stolen similar jewels from them these must be the actual ones which they had lost, an inference very likely correct, but valueless in a tribunal of justice.