ld
bodies in cottages delightfully picturesque to sketch, but dark and
damp as graves to live in; handed buns and tea at the school treats;
one wasn't always thinking about delicate matters of conscience, about
renunciation, self-abnegation, and what it must mean to be a soldier
under a captain who neither lived delicately, nor slept softly, nor was
used to stately shelter--a crucified head whose arms are the
instruments of the Passion--and how well off one's body was!"

And I've been--no, I've been bidden to the Dialectical Society. You
don't know what that is, my barbaric New Zealander? And I didn't know
either when Mr. Malise sent me tickets for one evening, specially
urging my attendance, as there would be something well worth hearing--a
paper on "Celibacy" read by its author, a gifted young girl of only
twenty-two!

I took my tickets to my liege. "Ronayne, fount of wisdom and light,
whatever may the Dialectical Society be?"

"The Dialectical Society, madam, is a body of men and women who meet to
rake up, turn over, and discuss to all their verges subjects which the
weaker mass of mortals think upon only on compulsion, with fear and
trembling, and in mental sackcloth and ashes. And pray, what have you
to do with Dialecticals, Eve? We are _not_ going there, if that's what
those tickets mean!"

"Oh, Adam! And why not? Because I'm, unluckily, married, am I to stop
trying to improve myself, and not care to know what grand heights
happier, unhampered women are scaling? And, Adam, only see, here's to
be a paper read by a young lady only twenty-two, Mr. Malise says, and
there couldn't be anything so very dreadful to hear in the little
composition of an innocent young creature like that!"

"'Subject, Celibacy, by Eliza Stella Greatheart, M.D.,'" read Ronayne.
"Humph! charming young creature! Well, madam Lil, you'll have to
imagine what the medical young lady will say on the state she's proved
to such ripeness of years, for you're not likely to hear, and Mr.
Malise has wasted his tickets. And as if you cared what anybody could
say about single blessedness--a woman with an angel in the nursery
crib, and a husband who breathes but to serve her! Go away this
minute!" And I left monseigneur to his _moutons_, a little huffed, no
doubt, at being interrupted in the fine middle of a working
morning--always "The Growth of Language"; and you should see the pile
of MSS. I used to copy for him, but lately it has taken so much time