th them--a plea which is most justly
scouted as a mere get-off--a bit of heartless fine-ladyism. Have I read
Mill? No. From the time my school days ended, at seventeen, for ten--no,
twelve years, until I married, two years ago, I had neither time nor
eyes for reading. Why, I could almost count upon my fingers the books I
had read--"after school-books, of course, and then some anatomical
reading which don't count; there's--let me see--'The Improvisatore,'
Vasari's 'Lives of Painters,' 'Charles Auchester,' Rio's 'Lectures on
Christian Art,' 'Christie Johnstone,' 'La Mare au Diable,' two or three
of Balzac's novels, and all of poetry and of Ruskin I could ever lay
hands on!"

She looked astonished for a moment; then her face brightened. "Here's
richness!" I'm sure her thought might have been translated. "Here's a
virgin soil with nothing to dispute the growth of good seed." And I feel
I'm to be taken in hand. I'm quite ready. It is even something to look
forward to in the horrible London winter. She told me "little Malaise"
is to be brought up after the most recently approved scientific manner,
by weight, measure, and clockwork. His birth, even, was a triumph of
principle, for on that occasion Mrs. Malise was attended by a young
woman who had been unsuccessful in her medical studies, and failed to
obtain her degree--"Because I believed it jealousy, you know, and I
wished to encourage her!"

When he is three or four years old (certainly as early as they take
them!) he is to be put in the kindergarten at Geneva, and left there for
some years. It's a consolation to think that he can't be anywhere more
desolate than he's sure to be at home.

Meanwhile, work for papa and mamma, and bouts of colic for him, poor
little chap!

Last night I assisted at a distance at his nightly bath. The combined
forces of father and mother were required for this process, and the
ceremony was so utterly whimsical that I should have enjoyed it without
a pang if the small object most concerned had only been a dog. The pair
had stationed themselves in a strong draught, and the child, cold,
unhappy, lay stripped and squirming on his mother's lap, while from a
cup full of water in a tiny basin she _dabbed_ him with a bit of
flannel precisely as if he were an ink splash which she was essaying to
soak up with blotting paper before it should spread about much!

The father's part was to try and present an available surface for the
dabbing, which he di