Of thrashing, anyhow.

* * * * *

"The feature of the Keswick valley is its spacious width of
skyscrape."--_L.& N.W.R. Guide to the English Lakes._

In this respect New York is its only serious rival.

* * * * *

MY TROUSSEAU.

Having been a bachelor from my earliest youth I suppose I ought to be
accustomed to the condition; but the fact remains that I miss
something--something which only a wedding supplies.

Curiously enough this want is not a wife. I have been without one so
long that I should not know what to do with her if I had one. I should
probably overlook her, and she would become atrophied or die of neglect
or thirst. Neither do I crave a home of my own; nor golden-haired
children to climb up my knee. I can do without these accessories.

But what I do hunger for and what I _will_ have is a trousseau. Why the
acquisition of a trousseau should be a purely feminine prerogative I
have never been able to understand. A bride without a trousseau is
generally regarded as an incomplete thing--a poached-egg without toast;
a salad without dressing. But the bridegroom without a trousseau is a
recognised institution. True, he has new clothes, both seen and unseen,
but this is not a trousseau; it is merely a "replenishment of his
wardrobe." His least disreputable old things are "made to do"; and
nobody thinks slightingly of him if he attends his wedding in a
re-cuffed shirt or in boots that have been re-soled. A girl, however,
would as soon think of entering Paradise with a second-hand halo as she
would contemplate being married in anything that was not aggressively
new.

Thus it is that before my wish can be consummated I have two honoured
conventions to defy: that only a girl may possess a trousseau, and that
a marriage is a necessary condition to the acquiring of it. Fortunately
I am strong-minded. A long course of Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD'S homilies has
given me no little facility in achieving this attribute, and I am
determined that I will change neither my sex nor my status.

Now, I have prepared a list, just as--I suppose--every girl does. In the
first place I am going to indulge in the hitherto undreamt-of luxury of
a surfeit of dress-shirts. No one who has not experienced life on two
dress-shirts--one in wear, the other in the wash--can quite understand
what this will mean to me. Men like Sir JOSEPH BEECHAM, Mr.
MALLABY-DEELEY, Mr. SO