d not have married an old man."
What! I say to him, must an old man wear antiquated trowsers? No! nothing
will turn him; those are his habits. But, you have not heard the worst.
The sight of those hideous trowsers totally destroying all shape in the
man, is horrible enough; but it is absolutely more than a woman can bear
to see him--for he will shave--first cover his face with white soap with
that ridiculous centre-piece to his trowsers reaching quite up to his
poll, and then, you can fancy a woman's rage and anguish! the figure
lifts its nose by the extremist tip. Oh! it's degradation! What respect
can a woman have for her husband after that sight? Imagine it! And I have
implored him to spare me. It's useless. You sneer at our hbops and say
that you are inconvenienced by them but you gentlemen are not
degraded,--Oh! unutterably!--as I am every morning of my life by that
cruel spectacle of a husband.'

I have but faintly sketched Mrs. Romer's style. Evelina, who is prudish
and thinks her vulgar, refused to laugh, but it came upon me, as the
picture of 'your own old husband,' with so irresistibly comic an effect
that I was overcome by convulsions of laughter. I do not defend myself.
It was as much a fit as any other attack. I did all I could to arrest it.
At last, I ran indoors and upstairs to my bedroom and tried hard to
become dispossessed. I am sure I was an example of the sufferings of my
sex. It could hardly have been worse for Mrs. Romer than it was for me. I
was drowned in internal laughter long after I had got a grave face. Early
in the evening Mr. Pollingray left us.

CHAPTER III

HE

I am carried by the fascination of a musical laugh. Apparently I am
doomed to hear it at my own expense. We are secure from nothing in this
life.

I have determined to stand for the county. An unoccupied man is a prey to
every hook of folly. Be dilettante all your days, and you might as fairly
hope to reap a moral harvest as if you had chased butterflies. The
activities created by a profession or determined pursuit are necessary to
the growth of the mind.

Heavens! I find myself writing like an illegitimate son of La
Rochefoucauld, or of Vauvenargues. But, it is true that I am fifty years
old, and I am not mature. I am undeveloped somewhere.

The question for me to consider is, whether this development is to be
accomplished by my being guilty of an act of egregious folly.

Dans la cinquantaine! The reflection should