—­There is another unfortunate way of looking, which is peculiar to that amiable sex we do not like to find fault with.  There are some very pretty, but, unhappily, very ill-bred women, who don’t understand the law of the road with regard to handsome faces.  Nature and custom would, no doubt, agree in conceding to all males the right of at least two distinct looks at every comely female countenance, without any infraction of the rules of courtesy or the sentiment of respect.  The first look is necessary to define the person of the individual one meets so as to avoid it in passing.  Any unusual attraction detected in a first glance is a sufficient apology for a second,—­not a prolonged and impertinent stare, but an appreciating homage of the eyes, such as a stranger may inoffensively yield to a passing image.  It is astonishing how morbidly sensitive some vulgar beauties are to the slightest demonstration of this kind.  When a lady walks the streets, she leaves her virtuous-indignation countenance at home; she knows well enough that the street is a picture-gallery, where pretty faces framed in pretty bonnets are meant to be seen, and everybody has a right to see them.

—­When we observe how the same features and style of person and character descend from generation to generation, we can believe that some inherited weakness may account for these peculiarities.  Little snapping-turtles snap—­so the great naturalist tells us —­before they are out of the egg-shell.  I am satisfied, that, much higher up in the scale of life, character is distinctly shown at the age of—­2 or—­3 months.

—­My friend, the Professor, has been full of eggs lately. [This remark excited a burst of hilarity which I did not allow to interrupt the course of my observations.] He has been reading the great book where he found the fact about the little snapping-turtles mentioned above.  Some of the things he has told me have suggested several odd analogies enough.

There are half a dozen men, or so, who carry in their brains the ovarian eggs of the next generation’s or century’s civilization.  These eggs are not ready to be laid in the form of books as yet; some of them are hardly ready to be put into the form of talk.  But as rudimentary ideas or inchoate tendencies, there they are; and these are what must form the future.  A man’s general notions are not good for much, unless he has a crop of these intellectual ovarian eggs in his own brain, or knows them as they exist in the minds of others.  One must be in the habit of talking with such persons to get at these rudimentary germs of thought; for their development is necessarily imperfect, and they are moulded on new patterns, which must be long and closely studied.  But these are the men to talk with.  No fresh truth ever gets into a book.

—­A good many fresh lies get in, anyhow,—­said one of the company.