Amiable creatures are the majority of women--to each other; charitable--above all things _charitable_! Always ready to acknowledge each other's beauty, or grace, or talent. Never sneer down a sister woman, or pay her a patronizing compliment with the finale of the inevitable--"_but_." Never run the cool, impertinent eye of calculation over her dress, noting the cost of each article, and summing up the amount in a contemptuous toss, whether it amounts to fifty cents or five hundred dollars, more likely when it is the latter! Never say to a gentleman who praises a lady, what a pity she squints! Never say of an authoress, oh yes--she has talent, but _I_ prefer the domestic virtues; as if a combination of the two were necessarily impossible, or as if the speaker had the personal knowledge which qualified her to pronounce on that individual case.
Well-bred, too, are women to sister woman.--Never discuss the color of her hair, or the style of its arrangement, her smile, her gait, so that she can hear every word of it. Never take it for granted that she is making a dead-set at a man, to whom she is only replying--"Very well, I thank you, sir." Never sit in church and stare her out of countenance, while mentally taking her measure, or nudge some one to look at her, while recapitulating within ear-shot all the contemptible gossip which weak-minded, empty-headed women are so fond of retailing.
Now just let a dear woman visit you. Don't you _know_ that her eyes are peering into every corner and crevice of your house all the while she is "_dear_"-ing and "_sweet_"-ing you? Don't you know that her lynx eyes are on the carpet for possible spots, or mismatched roses? Don't she touch her fingers to the furniture for stray particles of dust? Don't she hold her tumblers up to the light, and examine microscopically the quality of your table-cloths and napkins, and improvise an errand into your kitchen to inspect your culinary arrangements, to the infinite disgust of Bridget? Don't she follow you like a spectre all over the house, till you are as nervous as a cat in a cupboard? Don't she sit down opposite you for dreary hours, with folded hands, and that horse-leech--"now-talk-to-me" air--which quenches all your vitality--and sets you gaping, as inevitably as a minister's "_seventeenthly_."