e forgotten the horrid consequences in the horror of the
operation."

"It's much the same," said I, "at an execution."

"Look at those cards." He waved his hand towards a neat array of
silver and white pasteboard. "'Jemima Smith,' with an arrow through
the Smith, and 'Podger' written above it, and on the opposite side 'Mr
and Mrs John Podger.' That is where it has me, George."

We went on past a display of electroplate with a card about presents in
the window, past a window full of white flowers, past a
carriage-builder's and a glove shop. "It's like death," said my uncle;
"it turns up everywhere and is just the same for everybody. In that
cake shop there were piles and piles of cakes, from little cakes ten
inches across up to cakes of three hundredweight or so; all just the
same rich, uneatable, greasy stuff, and with just the same white sugar
on the top of them. I suppose every day they pack off scores. It
makes one think of marrying in swarms, like the gnats. I catch myself
wondering sometimes if the run of people really are separate
individuals, or only a kind of replicas, without any tastes of their
own. There are people who would rather not marry than marry without
one of those cakes, George. To me it seems to be almost the most
asinine position a couple of adults can be in, to have to buy a stone
or so of that concentrated biliousness and cut it up, or procure other
people to cut it up, and send it round to other adults who would almost
as soon eat arsenic. And why cake--infantile cake? Why not biscuits,
or cigarettes, or chocolate? It seems to me to be playing the fool
with a solemn occasion."

"You see, it is the custom to have cake."

"Well, anyhow, I intend to break the custom."

"So did I, but I had it all the same."

My uncle looked at me.

"You see," said I, "when a woman says you must do this or that--must
have cake at a wedding, for instance--you must do it. It is not a case
for argument. It is a kind of privilege they have--the categorical
imperative. You will soon learn that."

Evidently the question was open. "But _why_ do they say you must?"

"Other women tell them to. They would despise any one dreadfully who
did not have a really big cake--from that shop."

"But why?"

"My dear uncle," said I, "you are going into matrimony. You do not
show a proper spirit."

"The cake," said my uncle, "is only a type. There is this trousseau
business again. Why should a woman w