sweet-faced young ones who place each night beneath their pillow some
lock that once curled on a boyish head that the salt waves have kissed

to death, will call me a nasty cynical brute and say I'm talking
nonsense; but I believe, nevertheless, that if they will ask

themselves truthfully whether they find it unpleasant to dwell thus on
their sorrow, they will be compelled to answer "No." Tears are as

sweet as laughter to some natures. The proverbial Englishman, we know
from old chronicler Froissart, takes his pleasures sadly, and the

Englishwoman goes a step further and takes her pleasures in sadness
itself.

I am not sneering. I would not for a moment sneer at anything that
helps to keep hearts tender in this hard old world. We men are cold

and common-sensed enough for all; we would not have women the same.
No, no, ladies dear, be always sentimental and soft-hearted, as you

are--be the soothing butter to our coarse dry bread. Besides,
sentiment is to women what fun is to us. They do not care for our

humor, surely it would be unfair to deny them their grief. And who
shall say that their mode of enjoyment is not as sensible as ours?

Why assume that a doubled-up body, a contorted, purple face, and a
gaping mouth emitting a series of ear-splitting shrieks point to a

state of more intelligent happiness than a pensive face reposing upon
a little white hand, and a pair of gentle tear-dimmed eyes looking

back through Time's dark avenue upon a fading past?
I am glad when I see Regret walked with as a friend--glad because I

know the saltness has been washed from out the tears, and that the
sting must have been plucked from the beautiful face of Sorrow ere we

dare press her pale lips to ours. Time has laid his healing hand upon
the wound when we can look back upon the pain we once fainted under

and no bitterness or despair rises in our hearts. The burden is no
longer heavy when we have for our past troubles only the same sweet

mingling of pleasure and pity that we feel when old knight-hearted
Colonel Newcome answers "_adsum_" to the great roll-call, or when Tom

and Maggie Tulliver, clasping hands through the mists that have
divided them, go down, locked in each other's arms, beneath the

swollen waters of the Floss.
Talking of poor Tom and Maggie Tulliver brings to my mind a saying of

George Eliot's in connection with this subject of melancholy. She
speaks somewhere of the "sadness of a summer's evening." How

wonderfully true--like everything that came from that wonderful
pen--the observation is! Who has not felt the sorrowful enchantment

of those lingering sunsets? The world belongs to Melancholy then, a
thoughtful deep-eyed maiden who loves not the glare of day. It is not

till "light thickens and the crow wings to the rocky wood" that she
steals forth from her groves. Her palace is in twilight land. It is

there she meets us. At her shadowy gate she takes our hand in hers
and walks beside us through her mystic realm. We see no form, but

seem to hear the rustling of her wings.
Even in the toiling hum-drum city her spirit comes to us. There is a

somber presence in each long, dull street; and the dark river creeps
ghostlike under the black arches, as if bearing some hidden secret

beneath its muddy waves.
In the silent country, when the trees and hedges loom dim and blurred

against the rising night, and the bat's wing flutters in our face, and
the land-rail's cry sounds drearily across the fields, the spell sinks

deeper still into our hearts. We seem in that hour to be standing by
some unseen death-bed, and in the swaying of the elms we hear the sigh

of the dying day.
A solemnsadness reigns. A great peace is around us. In its light

our cares of the working day grow small and trivial, and bread and
cheese--ay, and even kisses--do not seem the only things worth

striving for. Thoughts we cannot speak but only listen to flood in
upon us, and standing in the stillness under earth's darkening dome,

we feel that we are greater than our petty lives. Hung round with
those dusky curtains, the world is no longer a mere dingy workshop,

but a statelytemplewherein man may worship, and where at times in
the dimness his groping hands touch God's.

ON BEING HARD UP.
It is a most remarkable thing. I sat down with the full intention of

writing something clever and original; but for the life of me I can't
think of anything clever and original--at least, not at this moment.

The only thing I can think about now is being hard up. I suppose
having my hands in my pockets has made me think about this. I always

do sit with my hands in my pockets except when I am in the company of
my sisters, my cousins, or my aunts; and they kick up such a shindy--I

should say expostulate so eloquently upon the subject--that I have to
give in and take them out--my hands I mean. The chorus to their

objections is that it is not gentlemanly. I am hanged if I can see
why. I could understand its not being considered gentlemanly to put

your hands in other people's pockets (especially by the other people),
but how, 0 ye sticklers for what looks this and what looks that, can

putting his hands in his own pockets make a man less gentle? Perhaps
you are right, though. Now I come to think of it, I have heard some

people grumble most savagely when doing it. But they were mostly old
gentlemen. We young fellows, as a rule, are never quite at ease

unless we have our hands in our pockets. We are awkward and shifty.
We are like what a music-hall Lion Comique would be without his

opera-hat, if such a thing can be imagined. But let us put our hands
in our trousers pockets, and let there be some small change in the

right-hand one and a bunch of keys in the left, and we will face a
female post-office clerk.

It is a little difficult to know what to do with your bands, even in
your pockets, when there is nothing else there. Years ago, when my

whole capital would occasionally come down to "what in town the people
call a bob," I would recklessly spend a penny of it, merely for the

sake of having the change, all in coppers, to jingle. You don't feel
nearly so hard up with eleven pence in your pocket as you do with a

shilling. Had I been "La-di-da," that impecunious youth about whom we
superior folk are so sarcastic, I would have changed my penny for two

ha'pennies.
I can speak with authority on the subject of being hard up. I have

been a provincial actor. If further evidence be required, which I do
not think likely, I can add that I have been a "gentleman connected

with the press." I have lived on 15 shilling a week. I have lived a
week on 10, owing the other 5; and I have lived for a fortnight on a

great-coat.
It is wonderful what an insight into domesticeconomy being really

hard up gives one. If you want to find out the value of money, live
on 15 shillings a week and see how much you can put by for clothes and

recreation. You will find out that it is worth while to wait for the
farthing change, that it is worth while to walk a mile to save a

penny, that a glass of beer is a luxury to be indulged in only at rare
intervals, and that a collar can be worn for four days.

Try it just before you get married. It will be excellent practice.
Let your son and heir try it before sending him to college. He won't

grumble at a hundred a year pocket-money then. There are some people
to whom it would do a world of good. There is that delicate blossom

who can't drink any claret under ninety-four, and who would as soon
think of dining off cat's meat as off plain roast mutton. You do come

across these poor wretches now and then, though, to the credit of
humanity, they are principally confined to that fearful and wonderful

society known only to lady novelists. I never hear of one of these
creatures discussing a _menu_ card but I feel a mad desire to drag him

off to the bar of some common east-end public-house and cram a
sixpenny dinner down his throat--beefsteak pudding, fourpence;

potatoes, a penny; half a pint of porter, a penny. The recollection
of it (and the mingled fragrance of beer, tobacco, and roast pork

generally leaves a vivid impression) might induce him to turn up his
nose a little less frequently in the future at everything that is put

before him. Then there is that generous party, the cadger's delight,
who is so free with his small change, but who never thinks of paying

his debts. It might teach even him a little common sense. "I always
give the waiter a shilling. One can't give the fellow less, you

know," explained a young government clerk with whom I was lunching the