[Illustration]

On the whole, then, I think I do wisely in leaving the question of your sex a doubtful one.  You would wish it so left yourself, otherwise so powerful a personality as yours would, I am certain, have revealed itself with greater clearness to an honest investigator, such as I humbly trust I have proved myself.  But, be that as it may, I can assert with perfect confidence that you are no respecter of persons, though it must, in fairness, be added, that one of your chief functions seems to be to implant an exaggerated respect and admiration of others in the minds of your victims.  In saying this I praise your impartiality, while I hint a dislike of your ordinary methods.  Not that I have any hope of causing you to desist.  For to desist would be to cease to exist, and I cannot fairly expect you to commit suicide, however much I may desire it.  Moreover, your subjects—­for, to be candid, you are a despot—­seem to like you.  You minister so craftily to their self-esteem, you flatter their vanity with an adroitness so remarkable, that, after a few feeble struggles, they resign themselves, body and soul, to your thrall.  Even then you proceed warily.  Your first labour is to collect, with patient care, all the little elements of dissatisfaction that are latent in every nature, and to blend them with the petty disappointments to which even the best of us are liable.  The material thus obtained you temper with intentions that seem to be good, and eventually you forge out of it a weapon of marvellous point and sharpness, with which you mercilessly goad your victims along the path that leads to ridicule and disaster.

Let me take an instance which I am sure you will remember.  When I first met little DABCHICK, I thought I had never seen a happier mortal.  He was clever, good-natured, and sprightly.  He sold tea somewhere in Mincing Lane, and on the proceeds of his sales he managed to support a wife and two pleasant children in reasonable comfort at Balham.  Mrs. DABCHICK could not be accused by her best friends of over-refinement, but everybody agreed that she was just the homely, comfortable, housewifely person who would always make DABCHICK happy, and be a good and careful mother to his children.  Often in the old days when I came down to Balham and took pot-luck with DABCHICK, while Mrs. DABCHICK beamed serenity and middle-class satisfaction upon me from the other end of the table, and the juvenile JOHNNY DABCHICK recited in a piping treble one of Mr. GEORGE R. SIMS’s most moving pieces for our entertainment, often, I say, have I envied the simple happiness of that family, and gone back to my bachelor chambers with an increased sense of dissatisfaction.  Why, I thought to myself, had fate denied to me the peaceful domesticity of the DABCHICKS?  I was as good a man as DABCHICK, probably, if the truth were known, a better than he.  Yet there he was with a good wife, an agreeable family, and a comfortable income to compensate him for his extravagance with the letter h, while I had to toil and moil in solitary gloom.