ossip in those days.

Well, as we had no insipid Casino, where people only gather for show,
where they talk in whispers, where they dance stupidly, where they
succeed in thoroughly boring one another, we sought some other way of
passing our evenings pleasantly. Now, just guess what came into the head
of one of our husbandry? Nothing less than to go and dance each night in
one of the farm-houses in the neighborhood.

We started out in a group with a street-organ, generally played by Le
Poittevin, the painter, with a cotton nightcap on his head. Two men
carried lanterns. We followed in procession, laughing and chattering
like a pack of fools.

We woke up the farmer and his servant-maids and laboring men. We got
them to make onion-soup (horror!), and we danced under the apple-trees,
to the sound of the barrel-organ. The cocks waking up began to crow in
the darkness of the out-houses; the horses began prancing on the straw
of their stables. The cool air of the country caressed our cheeks with
the smell of grass and of new-mown hay.

How long ago it is! How long ago it is. It is thirty years since then!

I do not want you, my darling, to come for the opening of the hunting
season. Why spoil the pleasure of our friends by inflicting on them
fashionable toilets on this day of vigorous exercise in the country?
This is the way, child, that men are spoiled. I embrace you.--Your old
aunt

Genevieve De Z.

* * * * *

WOMAN'S WILES

"Women?"

"Well, what do you say about women?"

"Well, there are no conjurors more subtle in taking us in at every
available opportunity with or without reason, often for the sole
pleasure of playing tricks on us. And they play these tricks with
incredible simplicity, astonishing audacity, unparalleled ingenuity.
They play tricks from morning till night, and they all do it--the most
virtuous, the most upright, the most sensible of them. You may add that
sometimes they are to some extent driven to do these things. Man has
always idiotic fits of obstinacy and tyrannical desires. A husband is
continually giving ridiculous orders in his own house. He is full of
caprices; his wife plays on them even while she makes use of them for
the purpose of deception. She persuades him that a thing costs so much
because he would kick up a row if its price were higher. And she always
extricates herself from the difficulty