At the trial she swore positively that she was first obliged
to unbolt the door in order to get out. Nothing could shake
her testimony, and she thus unconsciously negatived the entire
value of the defendant's adroit precautions. He was justly
convicted, although upon absolutely erroneous testimony.

The old English lawyers occasionally rejected the evidence of
women on the ground that they are "frail." But the exclusion
of women as witnesses in the old days was not for
psychological reasons, nor did it originate from a critical
study of the probative value of their testimony.

Though the conclusions to which women frequently jump may
usually be shown by careful interrogation to be founded upon
observation of actual fact, their habit of stating inferences
often leads them to claim knowledge of the impossible--"wiser
in [their] own conceit than seven men that can render a
reason."

In a very recent case where a clever thief had been convicted
of looting various apartments in New York City of over eighty
thousand dollars' worth of jewelry, the female owners were
summoned to identify their property. The writer believes that
in every instance these ladies were absolutely ingenuous and
intended to tell the absolute truth. Each and every one
positively identified various of the loose stones found in the
possession of the prisoner as her own. This was the case even
when the diamonds, emeralds and pearls had no distinguishing
marks at all. It was a human impossibility actually to
identify any such objects, and yet these eminently respectable