rustle of silk, as she passes smoothly forward to the nearest
point of safety. And this sort of prestidigitation, juggling the
dangerous topic out of sight until it can be reintroduced with safety
in an altered shape, is a piece of tactics among the true drawing-room
queens.

The drawing-room is, indeed, an artificial place; it is so by our
choice and for our sins. The subjection of women; the ideal imposed
upon them from the cradle; and worn, like a hair-shirt, with so much
constancy; their motherly, superior tenderness to man's vanity and
self-importance; their managing arts--the arts of a civilised slave
among good-natured barbarians--are all painful ingredients and all
help to falsify relations. It is not till we get clear of that amusing
artificial scene that genuine relations are founded, or ideas honestly
compared. In the garden, on the road or the hillside, or _tete-a-tete_
and apart from interruptions, occasions arise when we may learn much
from any single woman; and nowhere more often than in, married life.
Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes. The disputes
are valueless; they but ingrain the difference; the heroic heart of
woman prompting her at once to nail her colours to the mast. But in
the intervals, almost unconsciously and with no desire to shine, the
whole material of life is turned over and over, ideas are struck out
and shared, the two persons more and more adapt their notions one to
suit the other, and in process of time, without sound of trumpet, they
conduct each, other into new worlds of thought.

NOTES

The two papers on _Talk and Talkers_ first appeared in the _Cornhill
Magazine_, for April and for August, 1882, Vol. XLV, pp. 410-418, Vol.
XLVI, pp. 151-158. The second paper had the title, _Talk and Talkers_.
(_A Sequel_.) For Stevenson's relations with the Editor, see our note
to _An Apology for Idlers_. With the publication of the second part,
Stevenson's connection with the _Cornhill_ ceased, as the magazine in
1883 passed from the hands of Leslie Stephen into those of James Payn.
The two papers next appeared in the volume _Memories and Portraits_
(1887). The first was composed during the winter of 1881-2 at Davos in
the Alps, whither he had gone for his health, the second a few months
later. Writing to Charles Baxter, 22 Feb. 1882, he said, "In an
article which will appear sometime in the Cornhill, 'Talk and
Talkers,' and where I have full-lengthened the conversatio