Title:  Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891

Author:  Various

Release Date:  November 22, 2004 [EBook #14123]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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PUNCH,

Or the London charivari.

Vol. 101.

November 28, 1891.

LETTERS TO ABSTRACTIONS.

No.  VII.—­To vanity.

Dear vanity,

Imagine my feelings when I read the following letter.  It lay quite innocently on my breakfast-table in a heap of others.  It was stamped in the ordinary way, post-marked in the ordinary way, and addressed correctly, though how the charming writer discovered my address I cannot undertake to say; in fact, there was nothing in its outward appearance to distinguish it from the rest of my everyday correspondence.  I opened it carelessly, and this is what I read:—­

[Illustration]

Ridiculous being,—­In the course of a fairly short life I have read many absurd things, but never in all my existence have I read anything so absurd as your last letter.  I don’t say that your amiable story about HERMIONE MAYBLOOM is not absolutely true; in fact, I knew HERMIONE very slightly myself when everybody was raving about her, and I never could understand what all you men (for, of course, you are a man; no woman could be so foolish) saw in her to make you lose your preposterous heads.  To me she always seemed silly and affected, and not in the least pretty, with her snub nose, and her fuzzy hair.  So I am rather glad, not from any personal motive, but for the sake of truth and justice, that you have shown her up.  No; what I do complain of is, your evident intention to make the world believe that only women are vain.  You pretend to lecture us about our shortcomings, and you don’t seem to know that there is no vainer creature in existence than a man.  No peacock that ever strutted with an expanded tail is one-half so ridiculous or silly as a man.  I make no distinctions—­all men are the same; at least, that’s my experience, and that of every woman I ever met.