th sacred to
him.

* * *

"Ah, my dear, you little dream the ecstatic delight that exists in
Waste, for the vulgarity of a mind that has never enjoyed Possession,
till it comes to riot at one blow in Spoliation!"

"I do wish you would answer me plainly," I said, sulkily,
"without--without----"

"Epigrams!" she added, sharply; "I daresay you do, my dear. Epigrams are
the salts of life; but they wither up the grasses of foolishness, and
naturally the grasses hate to be sprinkled therewith."

* * *

We are ill appreciated, we cynics; on my honour if cynicism be not the
highest homage to Virtue there is, I should like to know what Virtue
wants. We sigh over her absence, and we glorify her perfections. But
Virtue is always a trifle stuck-up, you know, and she is very difficult
to please.

She is always looking uneasily out of the "tail of her eye" at her
opposition-leader Sin, and wondering why Sin dresses so well, and drinks
such very good wine. We "cynics" tell her that under Sin's fine clothes
there is a breast cancer-eaten, and at the bottom of the wine there is a
bitter dreg called satiety; but Virtue does not much heed that; like the
woman she is, she only notes that Sin drives a pair of ponies in the
sunshine, while she herself is often left to plod wearily through the
everlasting falling rain. So she dubs us "cynics" and leaves us--who can
wonder if we won't follow her through the rain? Sin smiles so merrily if
she makes us pay toll at the end; whereas Virtue--ah me, Virtue _will_
find such virtue in frowning!

* * *

Women always put me in mind of that bird of yours, the cuckoo.

Your poetry and your platitudes have all combined to attach a most
sentimental value to cuckoos and women. All sorts of pretty phantasies
surround them both; the springtide of the year, the breath of early
flowers, the verse of old dead poets, the scent of sweet summer rains,
the light of bright dewy dawns--all these things you have mingled with
the thought of the cuckoo, till its first call through the woods in
April brings all these memories with it. Just so in like manner have you
entangled your poetic ideals, your dreams of peace and purity, all
divinities of patience and of pity, all sweet saintly sacrifice and
sorrow, with your ideas of women.

Well--cuckoos and women, believe me, are very much like each other, and
not at all like your phantasy:--to get a well-fea