n afternoon for
tea and ices and gossip, she attaches to herself a foreign prince, she
even organises pic-nics, and enters upon a mild flirtation with a
middle-aged Baronet, she reads French novels of the newest school and
discusses their tendency with a long-haired lyricist who has lately
published a volume of poems entitled, _Love and Languor_.

Once every winter the Invalid Lady gets up a bazaar for the benefit of
the _Petites Soeurs des Pauvres_. Her husband lends his garden, her
daughter writes all the letters, makes all the purchases, and, with her
young friends, completes all the arrangements, whilst the Invalid Lady
herself looks on in occasional disapproval of the work that others are
doing. When the great day arrives, and all the company of intending
purchasers is gathered together in the garden, the Invalid is drawn
gently into their midst in a long, wheeled chair. She is robed in a
tea-gown of exquisite taste and design, the prevailing colour of which
may be the new "_Eau de Carmes_," mixed with ivory-coloured chiffons. As
it is thoroughly understood that she cannot walk, her feet, which peep
from under her laces, are arrayed in delicately open and striped silk
stockings, and in tiny shoes, which are decorated each with a single
diamond sparkling in the centre of a black bow. Thus apparelled, she is
wheeled slowly about, to receive the congratulations of her intimates on
her charitable spirit, and on the organising power which would do a
strong man credit.

In course of time her daughter marries, and leaves her. She then
establishes by her side a poor but devoted friend, with whom she
eventually quarrels for not speaking with sufficient respect of one of
the five mortal ailments with which she believes herself to be
afflicted. Death, whom she apparently courts with a weary longing, will
have none of her. The hale and hearty drop off, but the invalid,
querulous, weak, and hysterical, survives into a remote future, and
having become a great grandmother, fades out of existence in the
possession of all her faculties.

* * * * *

NOVEL ADVICE FROM LINCOLNSHIRE.

"Real people with splendid mothers would seldom become novelists,
because their mother's lore would prepare them for a safer career,
or they themselves, I think, would seldom have that intense
observant nature which a novelist must have. I suppose most of our
greatest writers, who have not created g