In the first place, a woman of ripe age has a knowledge of the world, and a certain suavity of manner and moral flexibility, wholly wanting to the young. Young girls are for the most part all angles--harsh in their judgments, stiff in their prejudices, narrow in their sympathies. They are full of combativeness and self-assertion if they belong to one type of young people, or they are stupid and shy if they belong to another type. They are talkative with nothing to say, and positive with nothing known; or they are monosyllabic dummies who stammer out Yes or No at random, and whose brains become hopelessly confused at the first sentence with which the stranger, to whom they have just been introduced, attempts to open a conversation. They are generally without pity; their want of experience making them hard towards sorrows which they do not understand--let us charitably hope also making them ignorant of the pain they inflict. That famous article in the _Times_ on the cruelty of young girls, _àpropos_ of Constance Kent's confession, though absurdly exaggerated, had in it the core of truth which gives the sting to such papers, which makes them stick, and which is the real cause of the outcry they create. Girls are cruel; there is no question about it. If passive rather than active, they are simply indifferent to the sufferings of others; if of a more active temperament, they find a positive pleasure in giving pain. A girl will say horribly cruel things to her dearest friend, then laugh at her because she cries. Even her own mother she will hurt and humiliate if she can; while, as for any unfortunate aspirant not approved of, were he as tough-skinned as a rhinoceros she would find means to make him wince. But all this acerbity is toned down in the mature woman. Experience has enlarged her sympathies, and knowledge of suffering has softened her heart to the sufferings of others. Her lessons of life too, have taught her tact; and tact is one of the most valuable lessons that a man or woman can learn. She sees at a glance the weak points and sore places in her companion, and she avoids them; or if she passes over them, it is with a hand so soft and tender, a touch so soothing, that she calms instead of irritating. A girl would have come down on those weak places heavily, and would have torn off the bandages from the sore ones, jesting at scars because she herself had never felt a wound, and deriding the sybaritism of diachylon because ignorant of the anguish it conceals.