old piping favourite, save where two wires had been pushed apart to

hold its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer.

The engineer apprentices would have nothing to say to us, nor

indeed to the bagman; but talked low and sparingly to one another,

or raked us in the gaslight with a gleam of spectacles. For though

handsome lads, they were all (in the Scots phrase) barnacled.

There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been long enough

out of England to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, and

all sorts of curious foreign ways, which need not here be

specified. She spoke to us very fluently in her jargon, asked us

information as to the manners of the present day in England, and

obligingly corrected us when we attempted to answer. But as we

were dealing with a woman, perhaps our information was not so much

thrown away as it appeared. The sex likes to pick up knowledge and

yet preserve its superiority. It is good policy, and almost

necessary in the circumstances. If a man finds a woman admire him,

were it only for his acquaintance with geography, he will begin at

once to build upon the admiration. It is only by unintermittent

snubbing that the pretty ones can keep us in our place. Men, as

Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe would have said, 'are such ENCROACHERS.'

For my part, I am body and soul with the women; and after a well-

married couple, there is nothing so beautiful in the world as the

myth of the divine huntress. It is no use for a man to take to the

woods; we know him; St. Anthony tried the same thing long ago, and

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