an absolute hump, may marry whom she likes.  Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field and don’t know their own powers.  They would overcome us entirely if they did.—­The Newcomes.

As for women—­O my dear friends and brethren in this vale of tears—­did you ever see anything so curious and monstrous and annoying as the way in which women court Princekin when he is marriageable!—­The Newcomes.

     She was as gentle and amenable to reason, as good-natured a girl
     as could be; a little vacant and silly, but some men like dolls for
     wives.—­The Newcomes.

She had been bred to measure her actions by a standard which the world may nominally admit, but which it leaves for the most part unheeded.  Worship, love, duty, as taught her by the devout study of the sacred law which interprets and defines it—­if these formed the outward practice of her life, they were also its constant and secret endeavor and occupation.  She spoke but very seldom of her religion, though it filled her heart and influenced all her behavior.  What must the world appear to such a person?—­The Newcomes.

There are ladies, who may be called men’s women, being welcomed entirely by all the gentlemen, and cut or slighted by all their wives....  But while simple folks who are out of the world, or country people with a taste for the genteel, behold these ladies in their seeming glory in public places, or envy them from afar off, persons who are better instructed could inform them that these envied ladies have no more chance of establishing themselves in “Society,” than the benighted squire’s wife in Somersetshire, who reads of their doings in the Morning Post.  Men living about town are aware of these awful truths.  You hear how pitilessly many ladies of seeming rank and wealth are excluded from this “Society.”  The frantic efforts which they make to enter this circle, the meannesses to which they submit, the insults which they undergo, are matters of wonder to those who take human or woman kind for a study; and the pursuit of fashion under difficulties would be a fine theme for any very great person who had the wit, the leisure, and the knowledge of the English language necessary for the compiling of such a history.—­Vanity Fair.

I can fancy nothing more cruel than to have to sit day after day with a dull handsome woman opposite; to answer her speeches about the weather, housekeeping, and what not....  Women go through this simpering and smiling life and bear it quite easily.  Theirs is a life of hypocrisy.  What good woman does not laugh at her husband’s or father’s jokes and stories time after time and would not laugh at breakfast, lunch, and dinner if he told them?  Flattery is their nature,—­to coax, flatter, and sweetly befool some one is every woman’s business.  She is none, if she declines this office.—­The