Chapter IV: Part 4

We once had an old cook who put it in a nutshell. "Happy is he who can look a policeman in the face," she declared. The wisdom of it! After all, is not half the world running away from retributive justice? Think, then, of the blessing of a legalised conscience. To be at peace with the policeman! Think of the rapture of envy a poor, hunted-down burglar must feel as he sees an ordinary citizen pass that awful being in a helmet without a quake.

I take this opportunity of offering to the great and polite one my little tribute of gratitude in the name of all the spinsters, widows, nursemaids, and puppy dogs who cross the street in the security of his outstretched hand. And of all maiden ladies, English and American, who seek his advice and ask him perplexing questions, which he alone can answer, for he is admittedly a combination of the street directory, the dictionary, and the "Encyclopædia Britannica" up-to-date. I have often wondered if he ever unbends? Does he ever take off his boots and his helmet, or does he sleep in them? Does he ever sit down? It must be a great joy and pride to be his wife, to be, as it were, on such friendly terms with the traffic. I am sure that, if she loves him, she asks him no questions.

Here, I really must digress just enough to say that until women can be policemen, and can stand like magnificent statues in the turmoil of vehicles and direct the tumult with one finger--without a moment's confusion--not until then will I believe that they have been chosen by destiny to do man's work. Bless the policeman! May his wages be raised--he deserves it!

The temporary power of a cabman is often concentrated in a moment of intense anguish for his fare when, if a four-wheeler, he rolls off his box, stares at the money dropped into a very dirty paw, makes a speech which ranges from reproach to vituperation, and follows you until a beneficent front door closes on your anguish. He has it in his power to take the bloom from the smartest toilette.

There is no one in the whole range of civilisation who has such a power to inflict humiliation on one as a cabman! He has that delicate perception that he knows just when his remarks will cut like a lash. He always grumbles on principle, and you would rather give him your whole fortune than have him make a spectacle of you before those other temporaries, the footmen. As if he didn't know it, and as if he didn't always choose the noblest of these as witnesses! You know that you have overpaid him, and so does he, but he follows you with running remarks, in the form of a soliloquy, which increase in virulence as you flee before him, and which produce that peculiar contortion of face in the well-bred footman, in which a grin battles with a countenance of stone.

Those awful footmen! I do believe that a cabby, in spite of his bad language, is sometimes the prey of softer emotions. One knows by observation that he often smokes a pipe, and from the way his chariot leans up against the pavement of the nearest saloon, out of which he comes with a frightfully red face and smacking his lips, one knows he is not a "bigoted" total abstainer. One even pictures him as retired to a mews, and in that peaceful retreat, with the family washing flapping over his head, enjoying respite from timid fares in the bosom of his family.

There is a monumental prejudice against four-wheelers. It is even growing. Once I used to frolic about in them, flitting from one afternoon tea to the other; now when I ask for one it is, if possible, secretly, and always apologetically. Why is it? They cost nearly the same as hansoms, but why are they so plebeian? Even a 'bus is not so low. Servants respect you more even if they know that you get into a 'bus out of their sight than if they witness your downfall into a four-wheeler. Kings have driven in hansoms, and Cabinet Ministers have been tipped out of them; but who ever heard of a King or a Cabinet Minister driving in a "growler"?

Of course, a 'bus is low, but you need not say you came in one, only you must be careful! The other day old Lady Toppingham called and grew quite eloquent on the levelling influences of 'buses; they might do for cooks and tradespeople, she said, but her principles were such that she really couldn't ride in one. All the time she was clutching a blue punched 'bus ticket on the top of her card-case with her relentless thumb. I agreed with her, and said that I also never could nor would, and no sooner had she gone than I was off to Whiteley's on top of a blue Kensington. Still, it is levelling, and you should always pick off the straws and never cling to the tickets.

However, the most ignoble conveyance is undoubtedly the "growler." To go in one to a smart afternoon reception requires courage. I shall never forget my last experience. It was an awful function, and both sides of the street were lined with private carriages, and a double row of footmen graced the _porte cochère_.

My four-wheeler was the only one in sight, and it was the forlornest of its kind. It shook like jelly and rattled like artillery. A burly being in sackcloth and dirt (instead of ashes) rolled off the box, and sixteen perfectly equipped footmen had their features set to a preparatory grin. I placed my foot on the dirtiest cab step in London, and from my white-gloved hand I dropped a liberal fare into a grimy paw. To the joy of the attendant footmen the owner of the paw said the most appalling things. I stopped the hurricane with another shilling, and flew up the steps and took refuge in extra haughtiness, and overdid it!

I was thankful when I was ushered into the drawing-room and cooled off in the icy stare of the other guests--some thirty women and two men.

Nothing betrayed that I was a "growler" lady as I took the limp hand of my hostess, who favoured me with a speechless smile. This she temporarily detached from a superior man in superior garments, such as, to do them justice, Englishmen only know how to wear. He was very perfect, and in one of his blank eyes he wore a glass.

I don't know his name, but I shall never forget him. He was evidently one of the lilies of the field who only know of four-wheelers by hearsay. Whether our hostess stopped smiling long enough to murmur an introduction I do not know, but we were quite lost among the furniture, and as much thrown on each other's society as if we were on a desert island. So when he uttered inquiringly something that sounded like "yum," I said desperately, knowing it could strike no answering chord, "I came in a four-wheeler; it requires a good deal of moral courage."

Then I stopped, blushing and embarrassed. How would he express his scorn! I stepped aside to give him a chance to vanish out of my plebeian neighbourhood; but, instead, said this gallant Englishman, bringing his eyeglass to bear on me, "Ow--ow--really? So did I. Never drive in anything else." Yes, there are heroes even in London drawing-rooms.

Has any one ever heard of a footman with wife and children? Can that cast-iron countenance ever unbend? Does that vacant look hide mighty thoughts, or does it hide nothing? Is a footman himself ever scorned? I do hope he is, for he has made me suffer so much. I have sometimes thought that if I owned a footman I should be too proud to live; yet on studying the faces of my fellow men so blessed, I find that they are not proud, but quite modest, and sometimes even shabby.

Yes, the owners of footmen are mostly less prosperous in appearance than their servants, while the possessor of a butler and footmen galore looks quite poor. But I do wonder where footmen go when they are old? I never saw an old footman but once, and that was in a registry office, a dim sanctuary, dotted by desks and ornamented by agitated ladies.

The awful temporary power of registry office clerks, how they do make one quail! There was about the old footman a fictitious smartness, a youthfulness so out of keeping with his haggard face that it gave me a shock. For once I was sorry that the biter was bit, and that the stony-hearted clerk behind his desk imparted his wisdom with such brevity and disdain.

I shall never forget the insinuating wistfulness with which the old man leaned across the desk, and, gracefully using his well-brushed silk hat as shield, described how bad times were, and that he would be glad to take any place at all, at any wages; all he wanted was a home. He would even go into the country--even in the country! It was too pitiful, and my heart ached for him as I recognised in the shabby smartness of his well-fitting clothes one who had "valeted" in higher spheres. By the way he held his top hat I saw how perfectly he had studied the outside of manners.

The cruelty of the beefy clerk was colossal. "We can't place old footmen, nobody wants 'em." He spoke like a machine. "But I'll take your name." The old man tripped out with a pathetic lightness as if to prove to us all by a sample how active his legs still were. So it seems that even the proudest footman should not be too proud.

I am not so afraid of butlers as I am of footmen. I have never met with an affable footman, but I have known one or two butlers who were quite fatherly. With one, in particular, I always long to shake hands. I admire his clothes so much. Never for an instant would any one take them for a gentleman's evening clothes. The magnificent girth of his ample tail coat shadows the most respectable of black trousers; they pretend to no higher sphere, but are perfect for the state of society in which they move. A rather fine head, like a respectable Roman Emperor's (if such a personage ever existed), completes an impressive personality.

I don't know what he thinks about me, but when he vouchsafes me something that is a smile and yet isn't a smile, I feel gratified. I always thought that his ancestors fought for my friends' ancestors in the battle of Agincourt, but, on inquiry, find he has been with them six months. The temporary owner of this great man is quite modest.

One of the funniest exhibitions of temporary power I once observed in America--in a church. Two of us had gone to hear a great American preacher, and we had been invited to sit in the pew of a friend, in a church to which we were strangers. We came early, and waited patiently just within the church door to be shown to the seat. Only a few stragglers had arrived, and all were waiting humbly for that important functionary--the sexton.

Now the American sexton--the verger--is a very mighty man indeed. Parsons come and go, but the sexton stays for ever. If he is not very tall and dignified in black broad-cloth, he is generally fat and fussy in the same. He picks out waiting sinners and seats them according to his boundless caprice. He knows just the kind of stray sinner who may be ushered into a charitable pew, and he knows the pews that decline to receive stray sinners under any consideration.

It is curious what courage it takes to penetrate into a strange pew; it is being a kind of Sabbath burglar. Never does a right-minded sexton usher an out-at-elbow sinner into the pew of the rich and great. That they are presumably addressing the same Divine Power is no reason. This explains the Roman Catholic hold on the people. If you are a Roman Catholic, you enter God's house and pray anywhere; but if you are a Protestant, what shy pauper would dare to stray into an expensive pew for a communion with his God?

My American sexton had, in the meantime, bustled down the centre aisle. He looked the little crowd over haughtily, and he refused to catch my wistful eye--my companion was getting very tired. At last I ventured, "Would you kindly show us to Judge ----'s pew?" "Can't now, I'm busy; my young men will come presently," and he darted off.

His young men did not come, and I looked vainly about for succour, for the pews were filling up. Suddenly the great swing-door at the entrance opened, and in came a tall commanding figure, a man of advanced years, whose name is a household word in the land, the great preacher himself. He pulled off his battered slouch hat, and I saw his kind, keen eyes as they rested on the white hair and tired face of my friend. "Why are you waiting here, what can I do for you?" he asked.

"We are waiting to be shown to Judge ----'s pew," I explained.

"I will show you, come with me." This he did, and left us the richer by the kindliest smile in the world.

Different countries, different exercise of temporary power. The English railway guard is not impressive nor much in evidence. The American railroad conductor, on the other hand, is a great man, but he exercises his power genially, and in the intervals of collecting tickets he is approachable. He generally takes up his abiding place at the end of one of the "cars," and puts his legs on the seat opposite and talks with a much flattered chosen one. He sees a good deal of the world, not being shut into a cubby-hole like his English brother. In the course of years of travel along a particular route his popularity becomes so great that it culminates in gifts, and many a popular conductor blazes in the light of a huge diamond "bosom pin," or carries under his arm at night a gorgeous presentation lantern. No man is so great but he feels flattered at his notice, and he really is not very proud, considering, and his power is benign.

In England his namesake, the 'bus conductor, has often made me feel the blight of his authority. There was once a misanthrope who took to keeping a light-house; if I were a misanthrope I would become a 'bus conductor. It must, of course, be awfully irritating, that temporary support he gives to beautiful ladies as they topple off; but it is compensated for, to some extent, by wrenching the arms of the lovely creatures as he hauls them on the foot-board of the 'bus before it stops. This, they say, he does out of pure benevolence, so that the poor 'bus horses shall not have to start up the cumbersome machine unnecessarily. Still, one ventures to ask if we poor women are not of as much consequence as a 'bus horse?

Last year a benevolent conductor nearly dislocated my arm as he pulled me up, and I ached for two months after. I protest against this misplaced tenderness! It is said that an Englishman may ill-treat his wife with more impunity than his dog, but I don't believe it. I am not afraid of the conductor unless I get in or out of his 'bus; but the haul he gives me in, which sends me reeling against the other passengers, and the pull he gives me out when I recline for a moment, without any gratitude, against his outstretched arm, makes him unpopular with me.

There is an American product which, with the American invasion, has, alas and alas! taken root here, and that is the American hotel clerk, real and imitated. He has come with the great caravanserais, and, like the American plumber, he is the target for American wit.

There is no doubt that it takes a cool and composed personality to "wrastle" with the travelling public, and yet the travelling public is not half so terrible as the cool and composed hotel clerk. He has brought insolence to the level of a fine art, and as he is answerable only to a corporation, that means that he is answerable to no one. He always puts you into a room you don't want, and having no pecuniary interest in the matter, it is to him of no earthly consequence whether you stay or not.

Complain to him, and you complain to deaf ears. He apparently has nothing to do but to loll behind the office counter and improve his finger-nails. Tumultuous rings of various bells leave him unmoved; passionate telephonic appeals he only answers when he chooses. He turns to an agonised public a face like carved wax and eyes like agate, and it recoils. The parting of his hair is a monument to his industry.

When I call on a guest at a big hotel I deliver up my card with hope, because, as the poet rashly sang, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast." Then I sit down and wait as near the office as possible, and wistfully watch the elegant leisure of the great man behind the counter. My card has disappeared in the custody of a small boy with a salver, and the chances are that before I see him again he will be a man grown.

After having waited half an hour I venture to intrude on the peace behind the counter, and I am received with a _hauteur_ which puts me in my right place at once. The guest, being merely a number, excites no earthly interest, but the clerk wearily sends another infant in search of the first, and then turns his immaculate back on me, and I am permitted to admire the shiny smoothness of his back hair. I again subside, and in my indignation I make up my mind to complain to the daily Press: Is thy servant a doormat that he should be so downtrodden?

Do not preach about the ancient tyrannies of kings and emperors, and other estimable folks, about whom history has probably told a good many lies, and to these add the further lie that I am happy because I am free and independent. I am not free and independent! Instead, I languish under the tyranny of a hundred thousand tyrants, before whom I grovel and quake. Several of them sleep on my top floor and treat me with much severity.

Instead of thousands of tyrants, give me, rather, one tyrant; I can accommodate existence to him, and it is distinctly more interesting and less complicated.

The problem of existence is its multitude of tyrants. Indeed, how delightful life would be if we were not so tyrannised over by the downtrodden!

_The Extravagant Economy of Women_

The trouble with women is that they do not know how to spend money. The great majority never have any money, or they are at the mercy of some grim masculine creature, be he father or husband, who demands items--now think of an average man bothering himself about items! It must be a survival of the time when we inhabited harems, or when we were beautiful dames to whom our true knights gave undying love but nothing more substantial; or we rejoiced the souls of the ancient patriarchs though we did not succeed in extracting any cash.

I don't for a moment believe that the lovely Hebrew damsel, Rebecca, had a penny of her own, nor that the peerless Guinevere had half-a-crown (or whatever the coinage was) to buy her Launcelot a love token. And though Scheherazade--that peerless, self-contained, circulating library of a thousand and one volumes--told enough stories to her Sultan to have made the fortune of a modern publisher, she could hardly have made less even if she had had the felicity to write a modern novel. The favourite of the harem would, it is certain, have found a purse a hollow mockery.

Now we modern women are the descendants, more or less remote, of Rebecca, Guinevere, and Scheherazade, and our greatest resemblance to our fair ancestresses is that most of us have no money to spend, and those of us who have do not know how to spend it. Heredity is an excuse for being what might be called the stingy sex.

What would the world have been like had the purse-strings of time been held by women? More comfortable, possibly, but, probably, much less beautiful. It takes the great, splendid masculine spendthrifts in high places to glorify the world with treasures of priceless art. But it was an immortal maiden queen who inspired the greatest poet of all time, and as the production of poetry has always been cheap, so poetry was the splendid and inexpensive contribution to the glory of her reign made by a not too extravagant queen. It is the men who keep alive the extravagance, the beauty, and the ideality of life. But little credit to them who have always been able to put their hands in their trousers pockets and jingle the pennies.

Now time may mean money for men, but who ever heard that time meant money for women? No one, for the simple reason that it does not. Time and trouble are of so little value to the average woman that she squanders the one and is prodigal of the other in the most appalling way. And by the average woman, are meant all such who do not earn their own living, no matter how modestly; nor those who have some serious purpose in life, though without the object of earning; nor those who, as wives and mothers, may estimate their time as of the value of a general servant's. But apart from these the rank and file of women, consist of the aimless ones--and there are all sorts of aimless ones: rich and poor, high and low,--who potter vaguely through life, through shops, through streets, through joy, through sorrow; think feebly, talk feebly, and feel feebly, and finally fade away, and cease to exist. Now think of the majority of men frittering away life like that!

For ten years I lived opposite an able-bodied, middle-aged woman who sat in a rocking-chair by the window, crocheting from luncheon time until dark, four mortal hours, and this for ten long years! Then she moved or died, I don't remember which. And yet, after all, how many of us sit with our hands folded, doing nothing, thinking nothing, but just mentally and physically limp, weighed down by empty, useless time, which we try to kill with yawning desperation.

We are adepts of the idle industries because our time is of no earthly consequence. Think of the miles of lace we crochet, the impossible embroideries we make, the countless odds and ends we construct, of no earthly use except to catch dust. Think of the hours we waste at the piano which no one wants to hear and which we never learn to play; think of the awful pictures we make, which no one wants to see; the innumerable things we do that are so much better done by some one else. There may be male loafers, superabundant male loafers, but it seems to me as if their united numbers are as nothing compared to those worthy lady loafers who are perfectly respectable and perfectly idle. Why should a woman be permitted to loaf unreproved? Is idleness a feminine privilege?

The average man is trained to do some one thing as well as his intelligence and his industry will permit, but the average woman is trained to do nothing, at least nothing well--she cannot even keep house well. Her only object is to fill her aimless existence with something, anything, just to kill time.

In other days girls were carefully taught all domestic employments; they had to learn to keep house, to sew delicately, to cook, and, indeed, to do all those innumerable minor things which are of such vast importance. The modern girl is only taught not to be illiterate, that is all. With this negative quality as a dowry, a pretty face and nice clothes, and some empty chatter, she is bestowed on a perfectly innocent young man in search of a helpmate.

Perhaps for the first time she has a little money--I speak, of course, of the respectable middle-class woman, for the lowest and highest are of no account, meeting, as they often do, on the dead level of extravagance. Now what can we expect of a young middle-class wife who has some money for the first time? That she wastes it when it should be saved, and saves it when it should be spent. She buys cheap food, but she decorates her baby with that white plush cloak and that awful plush cap which her middle-class soul loves, and which bear witness to her prosperity. So her olive branch is carried about in plush while her husband has dismal retrospects of other days, hardly appreciated, when he took his luscious supper at a third-rate restaurant, which in remembrance seems a banquet fit for the gods.

To spend money in just proportion to one's income, however small, and not to spend too little--for there is such a thing!--requires a higher degree of intelligence than the aimless and the inexperienced possess, and the woman who earns money has a keener, juster knowledge of its value than the woman who gets it from the masculine head of the family under whose thumb she languishes. Also, as I have said before, she has to learn the value of time in the process of evolution from the harem to the ballot-box.

I have a dear friend, a woman with a massive intellect, who is, however, not above economy. She has been in search of an ideal greengrocer, and, after much tribulation of spirit and waste of precious hours that mean literally pounds to her, she found him in Shepherd's Bush. Lured by the bucolic name, tempted by a vision of sprouts at "tuppence" per pound instead of "tuppence ha'penny," she made a pilgrimage there, wasted a whole precious morning, and joined a phalanx of other mistaken female economists who stood on wet flags in Indian file, each waiting her turn to be served. My intelligent friend waited twenty-five minutes, until she was finally rescued by a serving young man, and had the rapture of saving sevenpence.

She, naturally, returned home in triumph and in a 'bus, but she was so used up by her economy that it would have been flattery to call her a wreck. That night she had a chill, the doctor was summoned in hot haste, and he proceeded to attend her with that assiduity which only adds another terror to illness. When to this is added the bills for a protracted visit to the seaside, my intelligent friend confessed that it hardly paid to save sevenpence.

Now is it not also the extravagance of pure economy that takes women to the "sales," where they buy all the things they do not want? Would there be sales-days if there were only men in the world? Did you ever see a man go from one shop to another to get a necktie "tuppence" cheaper? To be penny wise is indeed the supreme attribute of women! For the economical one it is a terrible ordeal to go shopping with a father or a brother; a lover is different, he is still full of temporary patience. But husbands and fathers have no patience.

"If you like it, take it, but don't waste people's time," says the irate man, as if there weren't innumerable steps to be taken after the initial process of liking.

"I think I can get it a little nicer at Smith's," you urge, while your dear one looks at you cynically, for nicer means cheaper, and he knows it. "Come on then," and he bundles you into a cab, drives to Smith's, and lets the cab wait while you try to make up your mind. Those dreadful cabs, how they do make the economical woman suffer. Did you ever hear a woman declare that it is really cheaper in the end to take a cab? When does a woman ever think of the end? The average woman avoids a cab on principle. She feels it due to this same principle to draggle her skirts through the mud, to get her feet wet, and to come home an "object." But thank goodness, she has saved a cab fare, and you can get twelve quinine pills for tuppence.

Is it not also a part of our extravagant economy that makes women eat such queer things when they are by their lonely selves? What self-respecting man would lunch off a sultana cake, a tart, or an ice? Show me the self-respecting woman who has not done it! Women know how to cook--some of them--but none of them know how to eat. A woman feels that to eat well and substantially is a sheer waste; there is nothing to show for it, but she would not hesitate a moment to spend even more in something that she can show. A man doesn't think twice about having a "ripping" good dinner and a bottle of extra good wine; he thinks it is money well spent, but he will be hanged before he would buy himself an ornamental waistcoat and sustain life on a penny bun.

What awful things we should eat if it were not for men! I am sure _table d'hôte_ dinners were invented by some philanthropist to save women. "I cannot eat _à la carte_," said a friend of mine in a piteous burst of confidence: "it's just like eating money." So when her husband travels with her he always leads her to the _table d'hôte_ if only to preserve her from starvation. When she is resigned to the cost, she has an excellent appetite. I really think if it were not for men women would wrap themselves in sable and point lace and starve to death.

Is it not the woman who is the apostle of appearances? Go to a dinner party where the wines and the food are rather poor and well served, and you may be sure it is the fault of the dear female economist at the head of the table.

Who of us has not come across a gorgeous establishment where it takes three footmen and a butler to serve a tough chop of New Zealand lamb. The presiding goddess afterwards drives out in the park in an equipage magnificent with coachman and footman, and horses shining like satin with care and good feeding. No, they are not fed on New Zealand lamb!

For some people it is a wildly extravagant economy to ride in a 'bus. I know of a family of girls who pine for a 'bus ride as we poor things do for a chariot and four. They can't afford it; it would ruin the family credit, which is only kept up by a magnificent carriage--unpaid for--and a superb coachman and footman whose wages are owing. If one of these girls were to be seen in a 'bus, it would mean their downfall in the eyes of the confiding tradesmen. No, not everybody can afford to ride in a 'bus. After all it is only the rich and great the world permits to be shabby.

I heard of a nice girl who "slums" and who lives in the East End, having shaken the dust of Mayfair from her feet. She has reduced self-sacrifice to a science, and her life is an orgie of self-denial, and she is a hollow-eyed, haggard young martyr, and keeps body and soul together on five shillings a week. My only criticism of this scheme of altruism is that every once in a while she neglects and starves herself into an awful fit of illness, and has to be taken back to Mayfair and brought to life, and then the good physician sends a thumping big bill to her parents, who never get any credit for charity. Now I think even a modern martyr ought to have just a grain of common sense.

There is a certain intellectual town in America where tramcars still issue return tickets at reduced rates. How well I remember two dear maiden ladies, armed with principles, walking up and down in the snow and sleet of a winter's night one whole hour waiting for the particular tram which would accept their tickets. They let unnumbered other trams jingle merrily past, while they paddled about in the slush, strong in their sense of economy. They each saved three cents, and one nearly died of pneumonia.

One wonders how many of us die because of our reckless economy? Are we not for ever doing things for which we have neither the strength nor the capacity, just to save a few pennies, and do not many of us repent all our life long? I well remember a lady who to save hiring a man, lifted her piano to slip a rug under. When I saw her, she had, in consequence, been a helpless invalid for years with an incurable spine complaint.

Are not cheap servants another favourite female economy? I have seen a sensible woman rejoice because she had captured a cheap servant as if, what with aggravation of spirits and broken crockery, a cheap servant does not take it out of one in nervous prostration. Not to mention that the incompetent eat just as much as the competent!

Did I not read this very day how two delightful female economists, waiting for the opening of a certain theatre, sat on camp-stools from nine in the morning till seven in the evening of a cold, damp winter day for a chance to dive into the pit, and so to save a shilling or two. Was there ever a more cheering example of feminine wisdom and thrift?

I knew a woman who had the economical fad to get double service out of a match, but she found it awfully expensive. She went upstairs one night to dress for dinner. A doorway, hung with a frail, floppy art-curtain, connected her bedroom and her dressing-room. As she entered, she heard shrieks of "fire" in the street, and tearing open the window she found the house opposite in flames, and in an instant fire-engines came clattering through the crowd. She was a kind soul, but she did enjoy herself immensely, watching it comfortably from her window. It was over in no time, and as she looked at the chaos of fire-engines and firemen the thought struck her how convenient it would be if there were another fire just then in the street, for here they all were ready to put it out!

Whereupon she lighted the gas, and, true to her principles, carried the burning match to her dressing-room, through the floppy art-curtain. The next instant it was all in a blaze, and she was hanging out of the window shrieking "fire." They broke down her front door, trailed miles of dirty oozing hose upstairs, and finally left her gazing drearily at the black ceiling, the sodden furniture, the dirty water pouring downstairs, and a hideous burnt wall where the fatal art-curtain had been.

"At any rate," she said to herself, as she took a great, long breath, "it was convenient."

But since then she has never used a match twice.

How we all do love to save at the spiggot even if it does pour out at the bung-hole! Who of us has not seen a woman grow thin and sharp and old, in the struggle to save pennies while her open-handed husband throws away pounds? It takes a big, broad-minded woman to know when to open her purse-strings, and perhaps even a bigger and more strong-minded one to keep them always comfortably ajar.

At what early age can the girl-child be taught that what is too cheap is usually very dear? The majority of women never learn it. How many a woman goes out to buy a warm woollen frock and returns home with a be-chiffoned tissue-paper silk, because it was cheap and looked so "smart." That ghastly, temporary smartness which is a kind of whited sepulchre! There is no doubt that the Englishwomen--and I include the Americans--are the most extravagant in the world.

A Frenchwoman once expressed her amazement to me at the enormous amount of money Englishwomen spend on what is as useless as froth. Chiffon is the bane of the Englishwoman; she drapes herself in cheap chiffons while a Frenchwoman puts her money in a bit of good lace. She adorns herself with poor furs where a Frenchwoman would buy herself a little thing, but a good little thing. Finally, when the thrifty Frenchwoman has gathered together quite a nice collection of lace and fur, the Englishwoman has nothing to show for her money but a mass of torn and dirty chiffon whose destination is the rag-bag. After all it is an age of wax beads and imitation lace, and they represent as well as anything our extravagant economy.

Is not our middle-class cooking a monument to our extravagance? A British housewife has it in her power to take away the stoutest appetite with her respectable joint, her watery vegetable, and the pudding or tart that should lie as heavy on her conscience as they do on the stomach. If the Englishwoman would only take to the chiffons of cooking instead of the chiffons of clothes! It is an extravagance to cook badly; it is an extravagance to buy things because they are cheap; it is an extravagance to waste time in doing what someone else can do better (if one can afford it). After all it is only fair to employ others when one has the means. Don't we all want to live? Suppose editors wrote the whole contents of their papers, and publishers only published their own immortal works! What then?

The other day I had to buy some china to replace what had been broken. "They break it so quickly," I said to the polite salesman, in a burst of grief. "But if they didn't, what should we do?" he asked. It really had not occurred to me before, so a polite salesman taught me a lesson.

It belongs to the economy of the universe that neither we nor anything else should last for ever. Nature herself is methodically economical, witness the regular passing of the seasons. And does she not utilise one in the making of the next?

Yes, what we women need most of all is to be taught unextravagant economy, which includes the value both of money and of time, for the day is coming when women's time will really be worth something. Probably it will work a political economical revolution, but that cannot be helped, and, after all, the world's progress is punctuated by revolutions. If women enter men's sphere, the men will have to do something else. Still, women are barred by their very weakness from innumerable employments, and though they demand to vote, one never hears a very enthusiastic plea on their part to fight.

So let women earn, or at all events let them be given money as a right and not as a begrudged charity, and it will be cheaper for men in the end, with the result that our economy will become less irresponsibly extravagant. Possibly we will not save much, but we may live better, and, joy of joys, the doctors' bills will undoubtedly grow beautifully less, for I am sure that the immense prosperity of that learned and disinterested profession is mainly due to our extravagant economy.

_A Modern Tendency_

Where are the aged gone? At any rate the aged women? The fact is, there are no aged women; for, behold! the hairdresser, the milliner and the dressmaker have all decreed that there shall be no old age--and, lo! the miracle is performed; and our venerable grandmothers who once were old are now only strenuous copies, perhaps a trifle overdone, of our more or less youthful selves.

Who has not been told that she looks most lovely in a hat in which her last grain of common sense must clamour aloud that she really looks like a fright? Have not each of us, my suffering sisters, had relays of awful hats tried on our unoffending heads till we look like tortured ghosts, crowned by a wreath of roses or cabbages, and loomed over by a terrible young person in black satin? How that young person--well--prevaricated, and how the cold irony of her eye cut us to the quick!

I am dreadfully afraid to say so, but there are no serving young ladies who are so cruel as the milliners' young ladies. They are of course not all perfectly beautiful, but their wonderful tresses are always built up in such an artful way that they never fail to nestle in the nooks and crevices of the most unearthly creations. But they always say "It just suits Madam," even when they cannot possibly reconcile it to their conscience!

One asks why do all the big shops employ, for the destruction of the public, those tall sylph-like creatures who float about like denizens of a higher sphere, in their wonderful black satins. These satin robes have such an air that the white pins which occasionally hold together a rip look only like an eccentric ornament. The divine lengths of those graceful figures!

They are a serious unbending race to whom all things are becoming. So when they trail up and down what may be termed the trial halls of fashion to show off to a short, stout customer a garment to which she mistakenly aspires, no wonder that, struck by a temporary insanity, she succumbs. She is convinced that her five feet by an equal breadth will look like a five-foot ten inches, which is, besides, so attenuated that it is a problem how the young person can dispose of anything even so ethereal as a penny bun. Why not be merciful and employ a dumpy lot for dumpy customers!

It is a terrible thing in these days that there is no growing old. No happy time comes when the tired features are at liberty to sink into comfortable wrinkles, and nobody cares. The supreme joy of taking one's well-earned rest saying, "Behold, I am old! Age also has its beauties and compensations." The trouble is that nobody really believes it to be a joy.

There is probably no parting so painful as the parting from the days of one's youth; even if the outside be ever so youthful there is a knell in one's heart that tolls to the burial. One of the surest signs of age is when one begins to think of the past. Youth dreams of the future, middle age lives in the present, but old age dreams of the past. But whoever acknowledges dreaming of the past now that old age is out of fashion!

Years and years ago, when our mothers were very young, there was a distinct fashion for elderly people; certain colours were sacred to them, certain fashions, certain fabrics and certain jewels. What young creature would have foolishly decked herself in either purple or yellow? Youth rejoicing in sparkling eyes, resigned diamonds to its elders, and all aglow with hope and illusions left point lace to deck the stately shoulders of age along with velvet.

Now fashion is a republic and the only arbiter is a bank balance or credit, and young things frisk it in diamonds, velvet, point lace and sables, and their old grandmothers shiver along in _mousseline de soie_ and chiffon, roses wreathe their golden locks, red locks, black locks, as the case may be, but never their grey locks, and the winds of heaven fan their ageing shoulder-blades. The art of growing old gracefully is so rare that no wonder we cling to the hairdresser and the dressmaker with pathetic hands, just to postpone the evil hour; sometimes we think we have escaped the evil hour altogether. How we do cheat ourselves!

It is perhaps one of the most blessed dispensations of our frail human nature that we do not really know how we look; that when we gaze into a mirror we do not see the sober disillusioning reflection, but rather some fondly imagined image of ourselves. No woman is heroic enough to look her imperfections squarely in the face, or why do we see such curious apparitions? Why does that worn old face hide behind that white veil dotted with black? Because, when she sees her mistaken old features in the glass, then she sees what she longs to see, and when her old heart cannot pump up sufficient pink she dabs on that ghastly rose which has never yet deceived anyone.

Ah, yes, the twentieth century is distinctly reserved for youth--old age is not in it! It is a bad fashion set by that spoilt child of the world--America. The world pays the same deference to America that the average American parent pays to his obstreperous child. Yes, the American child rules the roost, and America rules the world; therefore, what wonder that age grows more and more unpopular.

The other day I saw in several papers that in a certain industry no workman would be employed in future who was more than forty. Put yourself in the place of a man of forty who is shelved and knows of no other way of earning his living! If he becomes a criminal, who can blame him? Recently I read a curious paragraph about the increasing use of hair-dye among working men. Not beer and tobacco, mind you, but just hair-dye! Why? Because employers do not want old workmen. So the men ward off the crime of growing old with hair-dye. Was there ever a more comic tragedy?

Alas! the world clamours for youth. White hairs compel no reverence. Age only suggests to brisk young things that the old people are not up with the times. What wonder, then, that the world caters for youth, and nobody takes the trouble any more to create fashions for old ladies?

If there is an institution which more than others wards off the coming of age, it is certainly the great shops. Twice a year these arbiters of fashion sacrifice themselves for the good of the public. Then do they guilelessly re-mark the treasures of their warehouses with those tempting signs which produce on the British public the effect of _hasheesh_ on the native of India. Beware of those peaceful and alluring pirates of Oxford and Regent Streets, O frail women who draggle last year's chiffons in this year's mud, and go to the greengrocers in the shopworn glory of the year before last. During sale-days the British matron lives in a state of ecstasy. To buy is bliss; to buy cheap is rapture. Cotton laces intoxicate her, and so does chiffon. She buys summer dresses in winter, and furs when the July sun bakes the sweltering town. That nothing is of any earthly use is of no consequence. Nor is it of consequence that what she buys is youthful, and she is old. It is these enchanting sale-days that explain the Englishwoman's orgies of wax beads, picture hats, party frocks at the wrong time, paper-soled slippers and open-worked stockings in pouring rain.

"A strong race, these English," an envious American said to me the other day.

"That's because they kill the weak ones off," I explained. "To be a perfect Englishwoman you must be able to sit with your poor bare shoulders against an open window at a winter dinner-party, preferably in an icy draught, and you must smile. If you can survive that you are one of the elect. It ensures you a social position, because you cannot have a social position in England if you cover up your shoulders."

I wish I could offer up an earnest plea for covered shoulders, at least for the aged! It seems to me when a brave woman has imperilled her life for forty years, nobly defying the cold blasts on the wrong side of the dining-table, and after she has got her young brood safely married, it does seem as if she then might retire to the well-earned comfort of a high dress without losing her position in society. But to cover up those poor melancholy shoulders is to announce the oldest kind of old age, and what woman has the courage for that?

There is no doubt that old age first went out of fashion when the bicycle came in, for age was no barrier to its keen enjoyment. But grandmother could not bicycle in a cap, and so she put on a billycock hat instead; necessity obliged her to show her ankles, and exhilaration led her to "scorch." It was then we asked in some perplexity for the first time, "Where have the aged gone?"

Still let us cling to youth, it is our modern prerogative as women; but only let us cling to it to a certain extent--to the extent that life amuses, but does not hurt. There are some of us who still have emotions at an age when, had we lived in our grandmothers' day, we should already have found permanent refuge in big frilled caps. We hardly realise the safeguard there was in a cap. It was the final chord to show that the symphony of youth had come to an end.

In the days of our grandparents it was the men who kept young, while the women were old at thirty-five; but in these days men are considered old in their prime, and it is the women who cling to eternal youth. Yes, indeed, the modern tendency requires readjustment. But after all, does it pay to try and keep young when one is really tired and scant of breath?

Let it go, even the loveliest youth, in its own good time. Have we not each had our turn at it? But one thing there is to which we should all cling with might and main, and that is a young heart, for a young heart has the only youth which is immortal. It will make of any woman, when the time comes, what is more rare and lovely than a young beauty, it will make her a charming old woman--and nothing in this wide world can be more charming, even if it is a little out of fashion.

_A Plea for Women Architects_

Now that it is the fashion, as well as the necessity, for women to earn their own living, and when they are crowding into all the employments hitherto sacred to men (and in some of which they are exceedingly out of place) one wonders that they so rarely take to a profession--or, rather, to one branch of it--which seems so distinctly adapted to their characteristic talents; and that is domestic architecture.

The longer I live in England the more I am struck by the singular inconvenience of the average English house; its supreme aim seems to be to make the occupier as uncomfortable as possible. I do not, of course, speak of palaces which rejoice in a majestic dreariness, nor of the homes of the brand-new rich, who, being unencumbered by ancestors or ancestral castles, can start fresh with all the newest improvements, so new, indeed, that they are still quite sticky with varnish. I speak of the average person, who has a moderate income, and who, without pretension, would yet like to get the most comfort out of life.

I am well aware that when it comes to a consideration of the defects of English architecture I shall be completely crushed by a reference to English cathedrals, to which the American makes adoring pilgrimages. It is true they are glorious. We do not live in cathedrals, however, but in houses, and the English houses are far, far behind the English cathedrals.

In America we are on the high road to perfection in domestic architecture, owing, possibly, to the acknowledged supremacy of our women. Where a woman reigns supreme, it is the end and aim of her men to make her comfortable and happy. Now the American architect, being a man, and belonging most likely to some woman, makes it his pride to provide for her--or her sex which she represents--the most comfortable, convenient and pretty house to adorn with her taste and her presence until she moves. We have no legacies of famous cathedrals; but, O! we do have absolute comfort in our houses!