umstances of life, but their names are paraded as if an
accident, which has happened once and may never occur again, were in the
daily order of events. They are brought to the front to make others
believe that the whole social thickness is of the same quality; that
generals and admirals and sirs and ladies are the common elements of the
special circle in which the family habitually moves; that pinchbeck is
good gold, and that stucco means marble. Women are exceedingly tenacious
of these pasteboard appearances.

In a house with its couple of female servants, where formal visitors are
very rare, and invitations, save by friendly word of mouth, rarer still,
you may see a cracked china bowl or cheap mock _patera_ on the hall
table, to receive the cards which are assumed to come in the thick
showers usual with high people who have hall-porters, and a thousand
names or more on their books. The pile gets horribly dusty to be sure,
and the upper layer turns by degrees from cream-color to brown; but
antiquity is not held to weaken the force of grandeur. The titled card
left on a chance occasion more than a year ago still keeps the uppermost
place, still represents a perpetual renewal of aristocratic visits, and
an unbroken succession of social triumphs. Yellowed and soiled, it is
none the less the trump-card of the list; and while the outside world
laughs and ridicules, the lady at home thinks that no one sees through
this puerile pretence, and that the visiting-list is accepted according
to the status of the fugleman at the head. She is very happy if she can
say that the pattern of her dress, her cap, her bonnet, was taken from
that of Lady So and So; and we may be quite sure that all personal
contact with grand folks does so express itself, and perpetuate the
memory of the event, by such imitation--at a distance. It is too good an
occasion for the airing of pinchbeck to be disregarded, and,
consequently, for the most part is turned to this practical account.
Whether the fashion will be suited to the material, or to the other
parts of the dress, is quite a secondary consideration, it being of the
essence of pinchbeck to despise both fitness and harmony.

There is a large amount of pinchbeck in the appearance of social
influence, much cultivated by women of a certain activity of mind, and
with more definite aims than all women have. This belongs to a grade one
step higher than the small pretences we have been speaking of--to wom