a lady in blue tights and flaxen hair. I
forget her name but never shall I cease to remember her exquisite charm
and beauty. Ah, me! how charming and how beautiful "artistes" were in
those golden days! Whence have they vanished? Ladies in blue tights and
flaxen hair dance before my eyes to-day, but move me not, unless it be
towards boredom. Where be the tripping witches of twenty years ago, whom
to see once was to dream of for a week, to touch whose white hand would
have been joy, to kiss whose red lips would have been to foretaste
Heaven. I heard only the other day that the son of an old friend of
mine had secretly married a lady from the front row of the ballet, and
involuntarily I exclaimed, "Poor devil!" There was a time when my first
thought would have been, "Lucky beggar! is he worthy of her?" For then
the ladies of the ballet were angels. How could one gaze at them--from
the shilling pit--and doubt it? They danced to keep a widowed mother in
comfort, or to send a younger brother to school. Then they were glorious
creatures a young man did well to worship; but now-a-days--

It is an old jest. The eyes of youth see through rose-tinted glasses.
The eyes of age are dim behind smoke-clouded spectacles. My flaxen
friend, you are not the angel I dreamed you, nor the exceptional sinner
some would paint you; but under your feathers, just a woman--a bundle of
follies and failings, tied up with some sweetness and strength. You keep
a brougham I am sure you cannot afford on your thirty shillings a week.
There are ladies I know, in Mayfair, who have paid an extravagant price
for theirs. You paint and you dye, I am told: it is even hinted you pad.
Don't we all of us deck ourselves out in virtues that are not our own?
When the paint and the powder, my sister, is stripped both from you and
from me, we shall know which of us is entitled to look down on the other
in scorn.

Forgive me, gentle Reader, for digressing. The lady led me astray. I was
speaking of "The Stormy Petrels," and of the reforms they accomplished,
which were many. We abolished, I remember, capital punishment and war;
we were excellent young men at heart. Christmas we reformed altogether,
along with Bank Holidays, by a majority of twelve. I never recollect any
proposal to abolish anything ever being lost when put to the vote. There
were few things that we "Stormy Petrels" did not abolish. We attacked
Christmas on grounds of expediency, and killed it by ridicule.