all, and talking at all only now and
then. Very agreeable and polite; but presently he asked me in
courteous phrase if he might smoke, and of course I said yes, and the
fragrant white smoke-wreaths mingled with the valley vapors, and as I
sat narcotized and rapt, looking, looking, looking into the lovely
landscape, and looking it into me, twisting the jagged finger-ends of
my gloves around the protruding ends of my fingers,--dreadfully jagged
and forlorn the poor gloves looked with their long travel. I don't
know how it is, but in all the novels that I ever read, the heroines
always have delicate, spotless, exquisite gloves, which are continually
lying about in the garden-paths, and which their lovers are constantly
picking up and pressing to their hearts and lips, and treasuring in
little golden boxes or something, and saying how like the soft glove,
pure and sweet, is to the beloved owner; and it is all very pretty, but
I cannot think how they manage it. I am sure I should be very sorry to
have my lovers go about picking up my gloves. I don't have them a week
before they change color; the thumb gapes at its base, the little
finger rips away from the next one, and they all burst out at the ends;
a stitch drops in the back and slides down to the wrist before you know
it has started. You can mend, to be sure, but for every darn yawn
twenty holes. I admire a dainty glove as much any one. I look with
enthusiasm not unmingled with despair at these gloves of romance; but
such things do not depend entirely upon taste, as male writers seem to
think. A pair of gloves cost a dollar and a half, and when you have
them, your lovers do not find them in the summer-house. Why not?
Because they are lying snugly wrapped in oiled-silk in the upper
bureau-drawer, only to be taken out on great occasions. You would as
soon think of wearing Victoria's crown for a head-dress, as those
gloves on a picnic. So it happens that the gloves your lovers find
will be sure to be Lisle-thread, and dingy and battered at that; for
how can you pluck flowers and pull vines and tear away mosses without
getting them dingy and battered?--and the most fastidious lover in the
world cannot expect you to buy a new pair every time. For me, I keep
my gloves as long as the backs hold together, and go around for
forty-five weeks of the fifty-two with my hands clenched into fists to
cover omissions.

Let us not, however, dismiss the subject with this apolog