ough and to spare amongst themselves,
and they are scarcely to be blamed if at certain moments they should
prefer refinement to roughness, and gentleness to gentlemen. However,
these obvious considerations have no weight with the Manly Maiden.
In fact they never occur to her, and hence arise failures, and
humiliations, and disappointments not a few.

[Illustration]

The Manly Maiden is not, as a rule, the natural product of a genuine
country life. The daughter of rich parents, who have spent a great
part of their lives in a centre of commercial activity, she is
introduced to a new home in the country at about the age of fourteen.
Seeing that all those who live in the neighbourhood are in one way or
another associated with outdoor sports, and that the favour in which
the men are held and their fame vary directly as their power to ride
or to shoot straight, she becomes possessed by the notion that she too
must, if she is to please at all, be proficient in the sports of men.
Merely to ride to hounds is, of course, not sufficiently distinctive.
Many women do that, without losing at all the ordinary characteristics
of women. She must ride bare-backed, she must understand a horse's
ailments and his points, she must trudge (in the constant society of
men) over fallows and through turnips in pursuit of partridges, she
must be able to talk learnedly of guns, of powders, and of shot, she
must possess a gun of her own, and think she knows how to use it, she
must own a retriever, and herself make him submissive by the frequent
application of a silver-headed dog-whip.

These attainments are her ideals of earthly bliss, and she sets out
to realise them with a terrible perseverance. Her father, of course,
knows but little of sport. He is, however, afflicted with the ordinary
desire to shine as a sportsman, and as a host of sportsmen. He
stocks his coverts with game, and invites large shooting parties to
stay with him. He himself takes to a gun as a hen might take to the
water; although, as his daughter contemptuously expresses it, he is
calculated to miss a hippopotamus at ten yards, he seems to imagine,
if one may be permitted to judge from the wild frequency of his shots,
that it is the easiest thing in the world to hit a pheasant or a
partridge flying at ten times that distance. From such a father the
Manly Maiden easily secures permission, first of all, to walk with the
men while they are shooting, and subsequently to carry a g