lling, are all strangely alike at these functions; and
we have all been embarrassed by the old-fashioned saucer. Circular in
shape, and hardly larger than the cup that belies its reputation and
dances drunkenly whenever another guest joggles our elbow,--which
happens so often that we suspect conspiracy,--the old-fashioned saucer
affords no reasonably secure perch for a sandwich; responds with delight
to the law of gravitation if left to itself; and sets us wishing, those
of us who think scientifically, that evolution had refrained from doing
away with an extension by which alone we could now hope to manage it.
_We mean a tail!_ If afternoon teas had been started in the Oligocene
Epoch instead of the seventeenth century, we are convinced that
evolution, far from discarding this useful appendage, would have
perfected it. A little hand would have evolved at the end of it--such a
one as might hold a Perfect Gentleman's saucer while he sipped from his
tea-cup.

Nay, more. In many ways that will at once occur to the intelligent
reader this little hand would be helpful in our complex modern
civilization. It would hold this essay. It would turn the music at the
piano. It would enable two well-disposed persons cordially to shake
hands when their four other hands were busy with bundles. It would slap
the coward mosquito that stabs in the back. It would be absolutely
perfect for waving farewell. Nor would there be anything 'funny' about
it, or shocking to the most refined sensibilities: the vulgar would
laugh and the refined would hide a shudder at the sight of a man with no
tail! We would, of course, all look like the Devil, but everybody knows
that _his_ tail has never yet kept him out of polite society.

This digression, however, leads us away from our subject into alien
regrets. We put it behind us.

The truth is, we do not like your afternoon teas--except those little
ones, like the nice children of an objectionable mother, that are
informal, intimate, and not destructive of our identity. At larger
gatherings we have no identity: we are supernumeraries, mere tea-cup
bearers, wooden Indians who have been through Hampton, hand-carved
gentlemen, automaton tea-goers. In short, we are so many lay figures,
each with a tea-cup in one hand and food in the other; we know that we
are smiling because we can feel it; we remain where we are laid until
forcibly moved to another spot, and we are capable, under pressure, of
emitting a few