The quietest, most serene of men must despair when there is no appealing to human reason. But Madam _shall_ be convinced. He counts again the serried syllogisms on trembling fingers, with flashing eyes and tremulous lips, with a voice half suppressed by rage; every word is accentuated as if it were to conjure up spirits and wake the dead. Arguments are applied like thumb-screws, the entire demonstration is held up menacingly like a pistol with trigger drawn; she is accused of reason, and in the next moment it is demanded of her, as one demands the evidence of his five senses from a person suspicious of insanity. Madam is asked to declare, brief and plain, whether she had understood; she is not to say what she will do or not do; the matter under discussion and its fulfilment is to remain secondary; the man wants naught but the satisfaction of an acknowledgment that he is right, that his better-half possesses and respects human reason. All material interest is to be set aside; her ladyship shall have quite her own way; it is only demanded that there be a declaration in the interest of truth, of logic, of human dignity; but of this the fair sufferer in the cause of Reason is not capable, it is asking too much of her feminine nature, it breaks her heart. She feels herself ill-treated; in her excitement she has heard nothing but words, and like a tragedy-queen, she has been occupied only with her grief. She comprehends naught but her boundless misery, and the axiomatic barbarity of the genus man. And the tears she has long repressed burst forth, washing away demonstrations, syllogisms, and all; _that is a woman’s logic_. Nature will not be forced, and least of all woman-nature. Dosed with argumentation and logic, it loses appetite, fulness, wit, complexion, grace, amiability, and vivacity. A platonic friend of the ladies is, as a rule, an unmanly creature; that is, quite as unreasonable and weakly constructed as the female to whom he feels sympathetically drawn. Manly differences and manly reconciliations are quite out of the question in so unnatural a relation. Especially is there one case which calls for commiseration--viz., when a genuine man is called upon to be the dependant, the counsellor, and the gallant friend of a vain old hag abandoned of all graces; when, for instance, a son-in-law is condemned to manage the affairs of madam his mother-in-law. Either the lady is ungently set to rights, or else his unbounded respect for old age brings the son-in-law to an untimely grave. With the most uncongenial male one can discuss a question, and there is a possibility of arriving at an understanding or compromise; with every man some manœuvre will catch, but never with a woman who thinks her interest and the authority of her wilfulness endangered. In this desperate case she is destitute of reason and character, without method and consistency, without understanding and common justice, an enemy of all business principles