adam. Things don't happen because they are bad or
good, else all eggs would be addled or none at all, and at the most it
is but six to the dozen. There's good chances and bad chances, and
nobody's luck is pulled only by one string.... There's a good deal of
pleasure in life for you yet.'

"'Nonsense! There's no pleasure for old women.... What are your
pleasures, Denner, besides being a slave to me?'

"O, there's pleasure in knowing one is not a fool, like half the people
one sees about. And managing one's husband is some pleasure, and doing
one's business well. Why, if I've only got some orange-flowers to candy,
I shouldn't like to die till I see them all right. Then there's the
sunshine now and then; I like that, as the cats do. I look upon it life
is like our game at whist, when Banks and his wife come to the
still-room of an evening. I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to
play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it; and I want to
see you make the best of your hand, madam, for your luck has been mine
these forty years now.'"

And, on another occasion, when her mistress exclaims, in a fit of
distress, that "God was cruel when he made women," the author says:--

"The waiting-woman had none of that awe which could be turned into
defiance; the sacred grove was a common thicket to her.

"'It mayn't be good luck to be a woman,' she said. 'But one begins with
it from a baby; one gets used to it. And I shouldn't like to be a
man,--to cough so loud, and stand straddling about on a wet day, and be
so wasteful with meat and drink. _They're a coarse lot, I think._'"

I should think they were, beside Mrs. Denner.

This glimpse of her is made up of what I have called the author's
_touches_. She excels in the portrayal of homely stationary figures for
which her well-stored memory furnishes her with types. Here is another
touch, in which satire predominates. Harold Transome makes a speech to
the electors at Treby.

"Harold's only interruption came from his own party. The oratorical
clerk at the Factory, acting as the tribune of the dissenting interest,
and feeling bound to put questions, might have been troublesome; _but
his voice being unpleasantly sharp, while Harold's was full and
penetrating, the questioning was cried down_."

Of the four English stories, "The Mill on the Floss" seems to me to have
most dramatic continuity, in distinction from that descriptive,
discursive method of narration which I have