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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: hearers than men, to begin with; they learn, I fear in anguish, to
bear with the tedious and infantile vanity of the other sex; and we
will take more from a woman than even from the oldest man in the
way of biting comment. Biting comment is the chief part, whether
for profit or amusement, in this business. The old lady that I
have in my eye is a very caustic speaker, her tongue, after years
of practice, in absolute command, whether for silence or attack.
If she chance to dislike you, you will be tempted to curse the
malignity of age. But if you chance to please even slightly, you
will be listened to with a particular laughing grace of sympathy,
and from time to time chastised, as if in play, with a parasol as
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