ice and in action women are proud
of being recognized as useful and sound advisers. As outsiders and
spectators they see a good deal of the game, have leisure to watch
narrowly all that is going on about them, and a subtle instinct teaches
them to tread delicately over all dangerous ground. It is curious how
many enemies women make amongst themselves, and yet how many enemies
they prevent men from making. They seem to have less of self-control or
prudence as far as their own strong feelings and fortunes are concerned,
than they have of tact and temper in managing the fortunes and
enterprises of others.

There can, for example, be no doubt whatever that the parson who aims at
being a bishop before he dies ought to marry early. The great strokes of
policy which bring him preferment or popularity are pretty sure to have
been devised in moments of happy inspiration, or perhaps during the
watches of the night, by a feminine brain. Good mothers make saints and
heroes, says the proverb, and beyond a doubt wise wives make bishops.
Their influence is not the less real because, unlike that of Mrs.
Proudie, it is exerted chiefly behind the scenes. It is possibly because
the influence possessed by women is so intangible, depending as it does
less on the reason than on the sentiment, affection, and convenience of
the other sex, that women are so jealous to assert and to protect it.

PIGEONS.

Every now and then, as the fashionable season comes round, in some
corner of its space the daily press records a wholesale slaughter of the
pigeon species. The world is informed of a series of sweepstakes, in
which guardsmen and peers and foreigners of distinction take part. So
many birds are shot at, so many are killed, so many get away. The
quality of the birds and the skill of the shooters is specified. As the
minutest details of the sport are interesting, we are even told who
supplies the birds, and whether the day of their massacre was bright or
cloudy. This is quite as it should be. The British public can never hear
too much of the doings of its gilded youth. Sweet to it is sporting
news, but "aristocratic sporting news" is sweeter still.

And apart from this twofold source of interest, an element of deeper
satisfaction mingles in the complacency with which it gloats over these
pigeon holocausts. It is something to know that, in the last resort, we
have these high-born and fashionable marksmen to protect our hearths and
homes