r 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 i