Of course, to begin with, every man honestly believes that he has
made, is making, or could make a good lover.

So I admit at the outset that I am talking to the lover who not only
is successful in his own estimation, but the one who has been
encouraged in that belief by his own sweetheart or wife until he has
every right to believe in himself.

You are about to be told the honest truth for once in your life, so
much so that your wives and sweethearts will tell me behind your back
that every word of it is true. But after you have clamored for years
to know "how women honestly felt on such subjects," and when, nettled
at not getting the truth from us individually, you have declared that
"the best of women are naturally a little bit hypocritical," the
loveliest part of it all is that you will not believe a word of what I
have said, and, in accordance with that belief, will calmly announce
that I don't know what I am talking about.

Well, perhaps I don't. A woman's aim is never quite true. I could not
hit the bull's-eye. But in this case, please to remember that I am
firing at a barn-door with bird-shot.

I don't blame you for not believing me. It is against your whole
theory of life. Not to believe in yourself were a great calamity. My
grandfather was so unfortunately accurate that with advancing years he
came whimsically to consider himself infallible. And when, urged by
the clamoring of his equally accurate family, he sometimes consented
to consult the dictionary, and he found that he differed from it, it