. But, you
have not heard the worst. The sight of those hideous trowsers totally
destroying all shape in the man, is horrible enough; but it is
absolutely more than a woman can bear to see him--for he will
shave--first cover his face with white soap with that ridiculous
centre-piece to his trowsers reaching quite up to his poll, and then,
you can fancy a woman's rage and anguish! the figure lifts its nose by
the extremist tip. Oh! it's degradation! What respect can a woman have
for her husband after that sight? Imagine it! And I have implored him
to spare me. It's useless. You sneer at our hbops and say that you
are inconvenienced by them but you gentlemen are not degraded,--Oh!
unutterably!--as I am every morning of my life by that cruel spectacle
of a husband.'

I have but faintly sketched Mrs. Romer's style. Evelina, who is prudish
and thinks her vulgar, refused to laugh, but it came upon me, as the
picture of 'your own old husband,' with so irresistibly comic an effect
that I was overcome by convulsions of laughter. I do not defend myself.
It was as much a fit as any other attack. I did all I could to arrest
it. At last, I ran indoors and upstairs to my bedroom and tried hard to
become dispossessed. I am sure I was an example of the sufferings of my
sex. It could hardly have been worse for Mrs. Romer than it was for me.
I was drowned in internal laughter long after I had got a grave face.
Early in the evening Mr. Pollingray left us.

CHAPTER III

HE

I am carried by the fascination of a musical laugh. Apparently I am
doomed to hear it at my own expense. We are secure from nothing in this
life.

I have determined to stand for the county. An unoccupied man is a prey
to every hook of folly. Be dilettante all your days, and you might as
fairly hope to reap a moral harvest as if you had chased butterflies.
The activities created by a profession or determined pursuit are
necessary to the growth of the mind.

Heavens! I find myself writing like an illegitimate son of La
Rochefoucauld, or of Vauvenargues. But, it is true that I am fifty years
old, and I am not mature. I am undeveloped somewhere.

The question for me to consider is, whether this development is to be
accomplished by my being guilty of an act of egregious folly.

Dans la cinquantaine! The reflection should produce a gravity in men.
Such a number of years will not ring like bridal bells in a man's ears.
I have my books about me, my horses, my d