m the myriad other worlds that are rushing
down beside us through the eternal silence--were put into the heavens
to make the sky look interesting for us at night; and the moon with its
dark mysteries and ever-hidden face is an arrangement for us to flirt
under.

I fear we are most of us like Mrs. Poyser's bantam cock, who fancied the
sun got up every morning to hear him crow. "'Tis vanity that makes the
world go round." I don't believe any man ever existed without vanity,
and if he did he would be an extremely uncomfortable person to have
anything to do with. He would, of course, be a very good man, and we
should respect him very much. He would be a very admirable man--a man
to be put under a glass case and shown round as a specimen--a man to be
stuck upon a pedestal and copied, like a school exercise--a man to be
reverenced, but not a man to be loved, not a human brother whose hand we
should care to grip. Angels may be very excellent sort of folk in their
way, but we, poor mortals, in our present state, would probably find
them precious slow company. Even mere good people are rather depressing.
It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch
one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler
qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one. Some of us are
pious, some of us are generous. Some few of us are honest, comparatively
speaking; and some, fewer still, may possibly be truthful. But in vanity
and kindred weaknesses we can all join hands. Vanity is one of those
touches of nature that make the whole world kin. From the Indian hunter,
proud of his belt of scalps, to the European general, swelling beneath
his row of stars and medals; from the Chinese, gleeful at the length of
his pigtail, to the "professional beauty," suffering tortures in order
that her waist may resemble a peg-top; from draggle-tailed little Polly
Stiggins, strutting through Seven Dials with a tattered parasol over her
head, to the princess sweeping through a drawing-room with a train of
four yards long; from 'Arry, winning by vulgar chaff the loud laughter
of his pals, to the statesman whose ears are tickled by the cheers
that greet his high-sounding periods; from the dark-skinned African,
bartering his rare oils and ivory for a few glass beads to hang about
his neck, to the Christian maiden selling her white body for a score of
tiny stones and an empty title to tack before her name--all march, and
fight, an