to D--Dickens, in a description of a street row, represents one
of the lady disputants as saying to her adversary, "You go home, and,
when you are quite sober, mend your stockings"; and he adds that these
allusions, not only to her intemperate habits but to the state of her
wardrobe, were so exasperating to the accused party that she proceeded
to comply, not with the suggestion of her accuser, but with the request
of the bystanders, and to "pitch in" with considerable alacrity.
Assuming that her hose was as reported, let us hope that she had the
worst of the combat, for there is something in the idea of a _dowdy_
which is hateful to the manly mind. How life-like the portrait which the
word paints for us! a coarse, fat female, her dingy cap, with its faded
ribbons, awry upon her unkempt hair; eyes hookless, holes buttonless,
upon her shabby gown; a boot-lace trailing on the ground. When we clergy
visit Mrs. Dowdy's home, or the residence of her sister, Mrs. Slattern,
and find that, though it is towards evening, they have not tidied either
self or house, we know why the children are unhealthy and untaught, and
why the husband prefers the warmth and cleanliness of "The Manor Arms"
to his own miserable hut. As a house-keeper, Mrs. Dowdy could only
"please the pigs"; and this reminds me what an apt word we have in
_dunky_ for a rotund, obese, little porket. I do not find the latter in
Johnson, but dowdy in Shakespeare, and _slattern_ is from the Swedish.

No word suggests itself as I stand at E's, and I therefore proceed with
a sonata in F, composed, not by Beethoven, but by a horse-breaker, with
certain amplifications of my own: "The young horse was in famous
_fettle_, and _framed_ splendidly over the _flakes_; but he seemed all
of a _flabber-gaster_ when he caught sight of the water, put himself
into a regular _fandango_, and the more I _flanked_ him the more he
_funked,_ till in he went with a _flop._"

I come now to a gem of purest ray serene. To me the monosyllable _gorp_
is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. Take a youth, who has passed
his life as an underling on some secluded farm, to an exhibition of wax
figures, gorgeously attired, rolling their eyes and lifting up their
arms to slow music, and you shall see him _gorp_. Or go with that young
man to a display of fireworks, and when the first asteroid rocket sends
out its glowing stars you shall see that wide-mouthed, wobbling
agriculturist so gorp as to make it a