s that his proverb has been parodied, and that
it has been said, 'Scratch a Frenchman, and you find a dancing-master.'
But I know this proverb to be foolish; and I am candid and liberal
enough to say so.

"I hope you are not too lonely, and don't keep too much to your room.
Now I know by experience what life in a boarding-house means. How must
you feel, dearest Emmy, alone! Je t'embrasse. How gets on the German?

"We have such a specimen of the gandin here--the Vicomte de Gars. I
think John Catt had better make haste over.

"Yours affectionately,

"CARRIE."

CHAPTER IX.

_Miss Carrie Cockayne to Miss Sharp._

"Rue Millevoye.

"My dearest Emmy,--No answer from you? How unkind! But still I continue
to give you my ideas of the moment from this. What do we want? A writer
in one of the frivolous sheets which are called newspapers on this side
of the Channel, has been giving himself great airs; looking out of his
window, with two or three touches of his pen he dismisses the poor women
who pass under his balcony, and closes the casement with the conviction
that woman's rights and wrongs are put away for another generation.
Foolish women! They are plentiful enough, and they muster in fair
numbers at the Wauxhall meetings which have been going on here, to the
infinite amusement of the superior creatures who drink absinthe, smoke
cigars, and gamble, hours after we silly things have gone to bed. I am
not writing to deny woman's weakness, nor her vanity, nor the ridiculous
exhibition she makes of herself when she takes to "orating"--as the
Yankees say--and lecturing, and dressing herself up in her brother's
clothes. Do you think, my dear Emmy, there are many women foolish enough
to applaud Dr. Mary Walker because she dresses like an overgrown
school-girl, and shows her trousers? What is she like in society?
Neither man nor woman. But how many have imitated her? How many women in
England, France, and America have taken to the platform? One would think
that all womankind was in a state of revolution, and about to make a
general descent upon the tailors and tobacconists, turning over the
lords of the creation to the milliners and the baby-linen warehouses.
This is just the way men argue, and push themselves out of a
difficulty. This French philosophical pretender, who has been observing
us fr