ith anxious eyes fixed on others--the husband, father, sons, who
dominate them,--they live to please, to serve, to nurse, and to
console; revered certainly as queens of their tiny kingdoms, but also
helpless as prisoners.

Calm, as fixed stars, they regard (perhaps sometimes a little
wistfully) the orbits of brighter planets, and the flashing of
occasional meteors, within their ken; knowing that their own place is
unchangeable--immutable.

That the views of such women are often narrow, their prejudices many,
their conventions tiresome, who shall deny? That their souls are
pure and tender, their hearts open to kindness as are their hands
to charity, nobody who knows the type will dispute. They lack many
advantages which their more independent sisters (no less gifted with
noble and womanly qualities) enjoy, but they possess a peculiar
gentleness, which is all their own, whether it be adored or despised.

When one of their number happens to be cleverer, larger minded, more
restless, and impatient, it may be, by nature than her sisters,
tragedy may ensue. But not often. Habit and public opinion are
strong restrainers, stronger sometimes than even the most carefully
inculcated abstract principles.

To turn to another phase of the story--there was a time during the
Boer War when there was literally scarcely a woman in England who was
not mourning the death of some man--be he son, brother, or husband,
lover or friend,--and that time seems still very, very recent to some
of us.

The rights and wrongs of a war have nothing to do with the sympathy
all civilised men and women extend to the soldiers on both sides who
take part in it.

"_Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do or die_,"

and whether they "do or die," the mingled suspense, pride, and anguish
suffered by their women-kind rouses the pity of the world; but most of
all, for the secret of sympathy is understanding, the pity of those
who have suffered likewise. So that such escapades as Peter's in the
story, being not very uncommon at that dark period (and having its
foundation in fact), may have touched hearts over here, which will be
unmoved on the other side of the Atlantic. I cannot tell. I have known
very few Americans, and though I have counted those few among my
friends, they have been rarely met.

My only knowledge of America has been gleaned from my observation of
these, and from reading. As it happens, the favourite books of my
childhood were,