e-alarm, the
precipice was very serviceable. Four women and an old man went over.
With one exception (she was eighteen, and could bear a broken
collar-bone), they will not, I am informed, go over again.

The Lady of Shalott paid one dollar a week for the rent of her palace.

But then there was a looking-glass in the palace. I think I noticed it.
It hung on the slope of the rafters, just opposite the Lady of Shalott's
window,--for she considered that her window at which Sary Jane did not
make nankeen vests at sixteen and three quarters cents a dozen.

Now, because the looking-glass was opposite the window at which Sary
Jane did _not_ make vests, and because the rafters sloped, and because
the bed lay almost between the looking-glass and the window, the Lady of
Shalott was happy. And because, to the patient heart that is a seeker
after happiness, "the little more, and how much it is!" (and the little
less, what worlds away!) the Lady of Shalott was proud as well as happy.
The looking-glass measured in inches 10 X 6. I think that the Lady of
Shalott would have experienced rather a touch of mortification than of
envy if she had known that there was a mirror in a house just round the
corner measuring almost as many feet. But that was one of the advantages
of being the Lady of Shalott. She never parsed life in the comparative
degree.

I suppose that one must be the Lady of Shalott to understand what
comfort there may be in a 10 X 6 inch looking-glass. All the world came
for the Lady of Shalott into her looking-glass,--the joy of it, the
anguish of it, the hope and fear of it, the health and hurt,--10 X 6
inches of it exactly.

"It is next best to not having been thrown down stairs yourself!" said
the Lady of Shalott.

To tell the truth, it sometimes occurred to her that there was a
monotony about the world. A garret window like her own, for instance,
would fill her sight if she did not tip the glass a little. Children sat
in it, and did not play. They made lean faces at her. They were locked
in for the day and were hungry. She could not help knowing how hungry
they were, and so tipped the glass. Then there was the trap-door in the
sidewalk. She became occasionally tired of that trap-door. Seven people
lived under the sidewalk; and when they lifted and slammed the trap,
coming in and out, they reminded her of something which Sary Jane bought
her once, when she was a very little child, at Christmas time,--long ago,
when