before me.  But I see the bones lying about the roads to their houses, and in the areas and gardens.  Politeness, of course, prevents me from making any remarks; but I know them well enough.  One of the ways to know ’em is to watch the scared looks of the ogres’ wives and children.  They lead an awful life.  They are present at dreadful cruelties.  In their excesses those ogres will stab about, and kill not only strangers who happen to call in and ask a night’s lodging, but they will outrage, murder, and chop up their own kin.  We all know ogres, I say, and have been in their dens often.  It is not necessary that ogres who ask you to dine should offer their guests the peculiar dish which they like.  They cannot always get a Tom Thumb family.  They eat mutton and beef too; and I dare say even go out to tea, and invite you to drink it.  But I tell you there are numbers of them going about in the world.  And now you have my word for it, and this little hint, it is quite curious what an interest society may be made to have for you, by your determining to find out the ogres you meet there.

What does the man mean? says Mrs. Downright, to whom a joke is a very grave thing.  I mean, madam, that in the company assembled in your genteel drawing-room, who bow here and there and smirk in white neck-cloths, you receive men who elbow through life successfully enough, but who are ogres in private:  men wicked, false, rapacious, flattering; cruel hectors at home, smiling courtiers abroad; causing wives, children, servants, parents, to tremble before them, and smiling and bowing as they bid strangers welcome into their castles.  I say, there are men who have crunched the bones of victim after victim; in whose closets lie skeletons picked frightfully clean.  When these ogres come out into the world, you don’t suppose they show their knives, and their great teeth?  A neat simple white neck-cloth, a merry rather obsequious manner, a cadaverous look, perhaps, now and again, and a rather dreadful grin; but I know ogres very considerably respected:  and when you hint to such and such a man, “My dear sir, Mr. Sharpus, whom you appear to like, is, I assure you, a most dreadful cannibal;” the gentleman cries, “Oh, psha, nonsense!  Dare say not so black as he is painted.  Dare say not worse than his neighbors.”  We condone everything in this country—­private treason, falsehood, flattery, cruelty at home, roguery, and double dealing.  What!  Do you mean to say in your acquaintance you don’t know ogres guilty of countless crimes of fraud and force, and that knowing them you don’t shake hands with them; dine with them at your table; and meet them at their own?  Depend upon it, in the time when there were real live ogres in real caverns or castles, gobbling up real knights and virgins, when they went into the world—­the neighboring market-town, let us say, or earl’s castle—­though their nature and reputation were pretty well known, their notorious foibles were never alluded to.