because he has no wish to become acquainted with a new kind; so he keeps his guard up against her and turns his attention away from the intellectual and emotional changes she is passing through.

One husband once declared: "Ah, if only I could depend on my wife. We had been discussing a sea voyage together; we reckoned the expenses and then fixed the date of departure. But she changed her mind the next day and said simply: I don't want to go — who will feed the cat for two weeks? We won't put the dog in the kennel, for I don't trust them to give him his feedings on time, and the poor animal might get sick and die. In the end, after much back and forth, we stayed home and I spent the vacation building a garage."

And woman opposes her husband in all sorts of situations. A man may invite a friend of his to his house to introduce him to his wife, after composing a splendid pream-ble on that colleague's honesty, and

asking her to give her opinion of him as well. The honored guest arrives, takes his lunch, praises the cooking of the mistress of the house, and everything passes quietly — but after he leaves, she opens on her husband with: "I don't trust that man at all; he is after you to strip you of your money." Her husband tries to soften her sharpness, reminding her how she received him and how much courtesy she showed in front of him — could all that have been pretense? She replies that lack of observation is proverbial in men; voices rise, and the couple quarrels. He asks her to support her state-ments with proofs, and she affirms that her intuition inspires what she says, so there is no need of proof so long as she believes her words are true. This, perhaps, is the way of most women: they support their statements with no proof at all, relying on an inner feeling — and this creates a puzzle for the psychologists, who are unable to explain it.

Among the psychological changes that come over woman is that upheaval which accompanies the monthly period: she appears loving, then agitated; she grows vexed and complains, and soon turns critical of every movement around her, and at last returns to her natural disposition. There are individual women to whom this does not apply, but such is the prevailing notion; and when it does happen, the man stands helpless and bewildered, when duty calls on him to understand the situation and treat it. Then there is the change that comes over woman when she reaches the "age of despair" — that is, her middle years: at this stage she stands in need of mercy more than of criticism, being in the greatest need of man's understand-ing and tenderness, for her state of mind is unsettled.

Knowledge begets understanding — and woman is not the graven image some imagine her to be!...

From the magazine "Your Life"