d--No, no, do not be indignant with
ME. Did not you dream of these things AS WELL AS of love? Come now,
be honest. It was always a prince, was it not, or, at the least, an
exceedingly well-to-do party, that handsome young gentleman who bowed
to you so gallantly from the red embers? He was never a virtuous young
commercial traveller, or cultured clerk, earning a salary of three
pounds a week, was he, Cinderella? Yet there are many charming
commercial travellers, many delightful clerks with limited incomes,
quite sufficient, however, to a sensible man and woman desiring but each
other's love. Why was it always a prince, Cinderella? Had the palace and
the liveried servants, and the carriages and horses, and the jewels and
the dresses, NOTHING to do with the dream?

No, Cinderella, you were human, that is all. The artist, shivering in
his conventional attic, dreaming of Fame!-do you think he is not hoping
she will come to his loving arms in the form Jove came to Danae? Do you
think he is not reckoning also upon the good dinners and the big cigars,
the fur coat and the diamond studs, that her visits will enable him to
purchase?

There is a certain picture very popular just now. You may see it,
Cinderella, in many of the shop-windows of the town. It is called "The
Dream of Love," and it represents a beautiful young girl, sleeping in a
very beautiful but somewhat disarranged bed. Indeed, one hopes, for the
sleeper's sake, that the night is warm, and that the room is fairly
free from draughts. A ladder of light streams down from the sky into the
room, and upon this ladder crowd and jostle one another a small army of
plump Cupids, each one laden with some pledge of love. Two of the Imps
are emptying a sack of jewels upon the floor. Four others are bearing,
well displayed, a magnificent dress (a "confection," I believe, is the
proper term) cut somewhat low, but making up in train what is lacking
elsewhere. Others bear bonnet boxes from which peep stylish toques and
bewitching hoods. Some, representing evidently wholesale houses,
stagger under silks and satins in the piece. Cupids are there from the
shoemakers with the daintiest of bottines. Stockings, garters, and
even less mentionable articles, are not forgotten. Caskets, mirrors,
twelve-buttoned gloves, scent-bottles and handkerchiefs, hair-pins, and
the gayest of parasols, has the God of Love piled into the arms of his
messengers. Really a most practical, up-to-date God of Lo