They vote you "fast," and turn aside, fearful of contamination for their daughters.

Oh, the dreariness, the heaviness of a country dinner party! It seems to last four times as long as any other--parish, horses, or crops the only topic of conversation. How can you be interested in old Jane Smith's rheumatism when you have never heard of her before; in the swelling of a favorite mare's hock, when you did not know it possessed such a thing. People's views grow so dreadfully narrow, shut up in their small parish. Their stock of conversation is so very small. It is wise to find out your dinner partner at once, and avoid that man as you would a disease until the meal is announced. If not, if you accidentally get in his neighborhood, and he talks to you, all his conversation is at once exhausted, and you are obliged to hear it over again at table, or submit to an interesting silence.

Dinner parties anywhere are, I think, a mistake. It is a wicked waste of time to spend nearly three hours over eating and drinking. And you require such a very interesting "taker-in" to make it bearable at all.

The river is the nicest way of spending a holiday, in my opinion; you are so free and untrammeled. Mrs. Grundy even waives some of her laws on the river. The smaller the cottage, the more primitive the place, the more enjoyable it is. You can spend your time on the water, and when you are tired of that, you can hire a pony and trap and drive through some of the loveliest bits of English scenery, to your heart's content.

Only be careful before engaging your pony to find out its previous occupations. It is a necessary caution, I a.s.sure you. It once took me nearly an hour to drive out of one of the smallest villages imaginable. And why? Because my pony had formerly belonged to the butcher, and insisted on first going his rounds! I coaxed, I persuaded, I lashed him, but it was all of no avail. On he trotted until he reached the familiar doors of his late customers, and then he stopped and _would_ not go on for at least five minutes. One place was worse than any. I could not get him away for over a quarter-of-an-hour. This rather mystified me until I was told later that the butcher was on "walking out" terms with the cook residing there!

CHAPTER VIII.

ON TOWN.

There is not much difference of opinion as to when Town is at its best. Perhaps a few misanthropists, wrapped up in their little selves and their narrow thoughts, would shut themselves up during the season, in order to escape the pain of witnessing us all in our unG.o.dly career. Shallow b.u.t.terflies they call us. And what do they know about our lives? They judge from appearances; and because we wear a cheerful expression, shutting down our cares and struggles in our inmost hearts, and not burdening other people with them, we are called shallow and worldly. No, you good and G.o.dly people, what do you know about us? You are no more capable of judging than the ephemera, which lives but for a day, and so must consider the world all sunshine, all light. How can it imagine the night which closes round later on, when neither it nor any of its ancestors have ever lived to see it?

You ought to be punished for your ignorant mutterings. You complain of the well-dressed happy throng. You should be turned out in the streets in August and September, and if the utter dest.i.tution does not shortly turn your brains back in the right direction I am afraid your case is hopeless.

Does any place come up to London I wonder? Having never been out of England I cannot give an opinion. Unfortunately I have not the gift, like some people, of either imagining or describing places I have never seen--descriptions generally gleaned from other books and compiled under one authorship as original compositions. Why cannot they be content with laying their English stories in English scenery: places they know well and can write about. Some save up their money in order to go abroad and visit one particular place, so as to bring new scenes into their new books. But ah, how weary you get of this one place! It is brought into at least three of their next novels.

Everything, past, present and future seems to happen there. Your one prayer, as you lay down the book, is to the effect that they may soon be able to save up a little more and visit another spot.

There is so much going on in May, June, and July, that it is a difficulty to get through all your engagements and yet see everything there is to be seen. Then there is the Park. Two or three hours of the day must at least be spent in the Park. There we all come out to show ourselves and to look at others. There the equestrians canter up and down the Row. Such equestrians too! If foreigners take their ideas of English riding from the Row, they must form a high opinion of our horsemanship.

There are the loungers flocking around their friends or walking up and down in the hope of admiration. And they get it too, for who could help admiring such master-pieces of a tailor's skill? Are these really the descendants of that Adam whose posterity had all to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow? These automatons, whose only business in life seems to be to look after pretty women and themselves? Men are supposed to be bread winners, but they have a very easy time of it, I think, though they generally try to make themselves out so overworked. Go into that great centre of business, the City, and you find everyone of these busy men out and about, always apparently in a great hurry, never seeming to arrive at any destination, running about and hustling each other, occasionally meeting an acquaintance, which proves a good opportunity for one to stand the other a "drink." A funny way men have of showing their affection, have they not? "Ah! how de do, old fellow? Come and have a drink," is their invariable salutation to an intimate friend. After all it is better than the mutual kissing on the part of women, which is the more emphatic the more they dislike one another. Men are less demonstrative and therefore more sincere in their friendships. Anyhow there cannot be many at work in their offices, or where could this idle crowd come from?

In spite of their haste, though, they generally find time to stare at any woman who crosses their path. Why should not a woman go to the City? She has as much right there as man, and yet if she is in the least degree superior to the flower girls (?) who surround the Royal Exchange, she is looked on as a freak of nature, a positive curiosity, and is followed by every pair of male eyes within reach!

Mrs. Grundy is inclined to rather overdo her season, I think. There is so much she might leave undone, so many things that "never would be missed." Imagine the grat.i.tude that would be displayed to anyone who would put down and demolish those dreadful crushes, so called "at homes," where n.o.body ever is at home; where you have neither s.p.a.ce nor air from the moment you arrive until the glad time comes for departing. Does anyone enjoy them, I wonder! Does anybody like being literally baked with heat, which I am sure must exceed even that at Mexico; where one of the inhabitants of that delightful climate, when he died and went to perdition, found the contrast so striking that he was obliged to send home for his greatcoat!

Still, I suppose such entertainments will continue to exist. They are a good deal cheaper than b.a.l.l.s or dinners, and you can "knock off"

ever so many people at the same time.

It is well, at any rate, to consider economy in some matters in these wofully extravagant days. When the shops are decked out in their gayest colors to lure us on to destruction, why is it that "just the very thing you want" is placed so conspicuously in the front of the window, put cunningly near a mirror too, so that you see it all the way round, and it appears doubly precious?

How convenient it is, by the way, when they have mirrors in the shop windows. You can look to see if your hat is straight, or your veil nicely arranged, without being credited with vanity. You are supposed to be admiring the bonnets displayed to view, not yourself. Girls make a great mistake when they take little surrept.i.tious glances at any mirror they come across. The action is always noticed and condemned; while if they, instead, went up boldly, ostensibly to smooth their hair or alter a pin, it would be taken as a matter of course.

It so soon grows into a habit, this always looking about for your reflection, and one that is very difficult to get out of. Not that the men are at all behind us in this respect. There are not many of our little follies that the lords of creation do not take up and cultivate. You see them at dinner, addressing nearly all their conversation opposite--where hangs a mirror. At dances they are admiring and smiling at their reflections the whole evening, finding far more satisfaction in gazing there than at their partner, even though she be the loveliest in the land.

But to return to my subject. (I seem to be always wandering away.) You need never be idle in town. A wet day even makes no difference, when a place teems with picture galleries, as London does. They are such good places to meet your friends. You always see someone you know. You might as well be there as anywhere else. Of course you do not look at the pictures. You glance at the few you have heard talked about, just so as to say you have seen them. But you do not go to a picture gallery to look at _pictures_! "We always go the wrong way round. You avoid the crowd like that, you know," I have heard people say.

"_Avoid_ the crowd!" It is the crowd they want to see! There is less chance of missing your friends if you go in the opposite direction!

There is one real advantage though in beginning at the other end. You don't have the same people following you all the time, nor have to listen to ignorant remarks. "Who's that? She don't look very happy, to be sure," I once heard one woman ask of another as they were going round. "That? why that's Adam and Eve, o' course, and the serpent in the distance. I never 'eard of anyone else who went about without their clothes on, though why they put chains on her I can't think: it says nothing about 'em in the Bible."

I glanced at the picture. It was "Andromeda!" And they talk of the strides education has been making of late years!

CHAPTER IX.

ON CHILDREN AND DOGS.

Are you very shocked that I should couple these two subjects? An insult to the children, do you say? Well, do you know, I am afraid I consider it an insult to the dogs. I am not fond of children, and I love dogs. A man may be a superior animal to a dog, but a puppy is decidedly more intelligent than a baby. What can you find more helpless, more utterly incapable, than a baby? Look at a puppy in comparison. At a month old it is trotting about, and growing quite independent; more sensible altogether than a child aged a year.

I am afraid I shock people often by my opinions, but they are really genuine. I am always more interested in the canine race than in the blossoms of humanity. Very likely it is the behavior of each that makes me so. Children never take to me, nor come near me if they can help it. I do not understand them, or know what to talk to them about.

On the other hand, dogs will come to me at once, and, what is more, keep to me. I have never been growled at in my life, and I have come across a good many dogs, too.

"You were a baby yourself once!" How often has this been said to me when I have aired the above opinions. It is put before me as an unanswerable argument, a sort of annihilating finale to the conversation. Yet I really don't see what it has to do with the matter. I suppose I was a baby once. At least they say so. Which protestation, by the way, rather leaves it open to doubt, for "on dits" like weather forecasts are nice reliable inst.i.tutions if you do but follow the opposite of what they tell you. Still, as there is more than one witness to the effect, I will give in and admit it; I was a baby.

But the admission makes me no fonder of the species. If anything it makes me admire them the less; for if I at all resembled the photographs that were taken of me--"before my eyes were open," I was going to say; at any rate before I could stand--I wonder a stone was not put round my neck, and they did not drown me in the first bucket of water they came across.

It is said that ugly babies grow up the best looking, and _vice versa_. This is a pleasant and comforting thought for the ugly baby.

It can bear a little depreciation now, because it can look forward to the time when it will far outdo its successful rival. And the pretty baby's glory is soon over. It becomes only a memory which rather irritates than soothes. For after all, retrospection is not so pleasant as antic.i.p.ation.

The above remark was said before a child about four years old, the other day. She must have been listening intently, and having taken in the sense she inwardly digested it; for the next time she quarrelled with her sister, she broke in spitefully, "You must have been the beautifullest baby that ever was born."

Children should never be seen until they are over two. Until then they are neither pretty nor entertaining. But at this age they begin to say funny things, and so are interesting. "You only care for them when they amuse you!" cried a young mother once, indignant at my selfishness. I suppose it is a selfish way of looking at it; but if modern children were brought up as we were brought up I should not object to them in the least. We were always kept strictly in the nursery, only appearing down-stairs on the rarest occasions: and when we arrived there we behaved properly--we were seen and not heard. We did not run noisily up and down the room, taking up the whole conversation of the party. We did not try to make the most disagreeable personal remarks; or if we did we were sent up-stairs at once, and not laughed at for our "sharpness."

There are no children, now-a-days; they are mimic men and women. They dine late, they stay up until the small hours, and are altogether as objectionable a faction as can be. They respect their father and mother not a whit. It was only two or three days ago I heard a child of five allude to her father as "the fat old governor," and simply get laughed at for her remark, no one joining more heartily than the said parent himself. Of course, with such applause, the child repeats it again and again.

They have such dreadfully sharp eyes, too, these children. Not a defect escapes their notice. You tremble to hear what will come out next. They ask Mr. Jones what makes his nose so red. They want to know why Mrs. Smith puts flour on her face. In spite of a thick veil, they discover at once that Miss. Blank has a moustache, and inquire of her with interest if she is a man!

There are some nice children, of course--there are exceptions to every rule--and if they are pretty I cannot help admiring them. It is fortunate that I have never had anything to do with children. If I were a governess I should be so dreadfully unjust, I should always favor the pretty ones. I love beauty in any form. There are girls I could sit and look at all day, if they would let me. Only they are most of them so self-conscious; they expect to be admired, and when I see girls laying themselves out for admiration, however beautiful they may be, however strong my inclination to gaze, I will not gratify their vanity. For it is certainly true, that though we prefer the praise of men, we do not disdain any like offering from our own s.e.x.

That is the best of very young children. They do not notice you, they are not yet awake to the power of their charms, so that you are able to look your full. I say "very" young, because it is a knowledge that comes to them only too soon, and a little of this knowledge is, at any rate, "a dangerous thing."

Children sometimes set you thinking more than any philosopher who ever existed. Their ideas are so fresh, so unsophisticated, so original.

The atmosphere of the great unknown still seems to cling to their souls. They are not yet tainted with the world's impure air. They ask you questions impossible to answer, but which you are obliged to parry in an underhand manner, so as not to expose your ignorance. They solve problems and reach conclusions after a way of their own, which, at any rate, have plenty of reason about them. I remember being very much struck by a little boy's idea once when his mother was remarking on the strange appearance of a man who, while his whiskers were black as ebony, possessed hair of a snowy white. "But why, mother, should it seem funny?" broke in the child. "Aren't his whiskers twenty years younger than his hair?"

Dogs certainly cannot talk or say quaint things, but they can do nearly everything else. At any rate they can understand you and distinguish between the words, as the following instance proves.

We have family prayers at home, and have had them ever since we were quite little things. What an ordeal they used to be too! We used to be watched so strictly, and the moment our eyes wavered from our books, attention would at once be drawn to the culprits and cover them with confusion. Woe be to him, too, who forgot to turn over the leaf of his book with the rest! It is such an unkind thing to do to print all the books alike. If you forget and turn over later, you are at once detected. Being sharp children, however, we used to make this our first care, so that whatever we were doing--laughing, pinching, winking, our pages all went over together, so we _sounded_ attentive.

Our little dog was even more cunning than ourselves. He was never permitted, on any plea, to lie before the fire. "It enlarged his liver," his master said. Now this decree is a great deprivation to dogs. They like warmth and comfort just as much as we do; indeed, they love the fire to such an extent that if all the terrors of Hades were put before them, they would by no means have a salutary effect.

The dogs would try to be as naughty as possible in the hopes of getting there.

But this particular little animal was made of most obstinate materials, and had no intention of being baulked; so directly we knelt down for prayers, he scrambled from under the table, and stretched his full length before the fire. He knew he would not be spoken to until we had finished, and felt quite safe until we all joined in the Lord's Prayer at the end, when he would immediately decamp, and thus escape any scolding for his disobedience. It was more especially clever of him because we all joined in the Confession as well, but he never took any notice of that, and always put off his departure until the last minute.

We had this dog twelve years altogether, and a sad night it was, indeed, when he had a fit and died. The breakfast-table next morning presented a most distressing spectacle. We were all positively swimming in tears. The whole family was upset at his death; and when, later on in the day, he was wrapped up in a fish basket and buried in the garden, next door to a favorite rabbit--on whose grave a cabbage had been planted, most unkindly reminding him of the sweets of life he had left behind--we all lifted up our voices and wept again.

I often wonder if we shall meet our faithful dumb friends hereafter!

Sages say no; but I cannot believe they are so entirely blotted out, and like to think they have some happy sugary existence somewhere, and that we shall see them again some day.

Dogs are very human after all; they have a great many of our virtues and nearly all our vices. I expect it is this that endears them to us, for "One touch of nature makes all the world kin." They are just as contradictory, as disappointing, as ourselves. Why will they always show off to such bad advantage? After spending weeks in teaching them, and fortunes on pieces of sugar, why, before an audience, will they insist on ringing the bell when they are told to shut the door? and when you ask them to sit up and beg, _why_ do they die for the Queen?

A little while ago we used to have grand steeplechases with our dogs.