in the opposite tablespoon, grinning with idiotic
delight. Cylindrical looking-glasses produce
these distortions much more efficiently than
tablespoons; but they don't change the colour
of the hair, the eyes, the complexion, like this
thing in my hand. Decidedly it is not a cylindrical
looking-glass.

The omnibus stops at New Fangle Villa,
where I am to dine. I slip the hateful
commodity into my pocket, pay my fare, and,
after the usual preliminaries, enter my host's
drawing-room. My embarrassment is increased
by the circumstance that I do not know a single
person in the assembly except the host, with
whom I am very slightly acquainted. I say to a
hard-featured old lady (my host's mother), "How's
your glass!" and I ask the host himself if his
face is improved. I desperately correct my blunders,
try to drown them in a laugh in which nobody
joins, and observe two cubs in their teens
looking at me from a corner, and whispering.

Must I pass a whole evening in the midst of
this uncongenial society, with an unsolved
mystery in my coat-pocket? Ah, one gentleman
is alone in the back drawing-room, turning over a
volume of prints. He shall be my unconscious
assistant in my search after truth. I place myself
at his side.

"Engravings," I observe, violently endeavouring
to connect the subject of my thoughts with the
object of his meditations — "engravings,
however carefully and skilfully executed, are,
under ordinary circumstances, less faithful
semblances than the reflexion in a mirror."

"Under any circumstances," replies the
gentleman, dryly. He thinks I have uttered an
absurd truism. He is not aware, like myself, of
the frightful exception to the general rule.

"Some engravings are very cheap," I proceed,
with as much wisdom as I can muster.

"Some engravings are dear at any price,"
sulkily answers the gentleman.

"But of all the cheap things I ever saw,
nothing equals this" So saying, I pull the
glass from my pocket.

"Things like that cost fourpence, I believe,"
remarks the gentleman. The remark is
discouraging, but I continue, putting the
glass in his hand: "Look in that, and tell me
if you perceive anything singular in the countenance."

"I see nothing but my own face," replies the
gentleman, and disdainfully returning the glass,
he stalks, with an offended air, into the front
drawing-room. For the first time I observe that
he has a broken nose, and it is evident that he
detects in my question an allusion to that
circumstance.

But what care I for the feelings of that morose
lover of art? I have enough to occupy my mind
during dinner-time. The curmudgeon has
enlightened me as to the fact that the glass can
reflect other faces faithfully, though it persists
in mendacity when my own is presented. Its
attack upon me is clearly personal.

Conversation turns upon an artist who painted
his own likeness, and somebody observes that
this operation is attended with more than
ordinary difficulty, inasmuch as a man never
retains in his mind so clear an image of himself
as of another person. Is it possible that I have
been mistaken as to my own face, and that the
hideous reflexion in the sixpenny mirror is faithful
after all? While the rest are engaged in talk,
I furtively snatch the glass from my pocket,
and holding it below the level of the table,
regard it with a hasty glance, and perceive the
old vulgar, villanous countenance. I raise my eyes
in disgust, and I observe that one of the cubs
who were whispering in the corner is telegraphing
to a very young lady on the opposite side of
the table, and that I myself as I sit, apparently
absorbed in the contemplation of my own knees,
furnish matter for his communications. I drop
the glass, and in my efforts to pick it up again
without observation, render myself generally
conspicuous. I succeed in slipping it into my
pocket, but not till it has been seen by the surly
lover of art, whose eyes meet mine, and are then
instantly averted, with the expression of a
revived sense of wrong.

I now look forward with terrible interest to
the return of the company to the drawing-room.
I intend to look at myself in the large mirror
over the mantelpiece, and to compare the
reflexion there with that in the sixpenny glass.
Then shall I know to a certainty whether my
memory, under the influence of some unknown
feeling of vanity, has been inaccurate in its
record of my personal appearance, or whether
the glass has been the deceiver.

My host's wine is excellent, but I detest it as
an obstacle that retards our return to the
drawing-room, and when he cheerfully orders
another bottle of singularly choice claret ('37, I think),
he renders me as fidgety as though he had ordered
a bowl of the Borgia poison. I empty my glass very
fast, as though I should thus accelerate the
moment of retiring. It comes at last: I jump
up witli avidity at my host's proposal to
"join the ladies;" I am first on the staircase;
first in the front drawing-room, where I nod
hastily, utter a senseless compliment to the
galaxy of beauty that presents itself; and then
retreat through the folding-doors to the
adjoining apartment, which is fortunately empty.
I place myself in front of the looking-glass over
the mantelpiece, I draw the small mirror from
my pocket, I compare the reflexions in both,
and —my vanity is satisfied. The face in the large
glass is just such a face as I thought I possessed;
the vulgar, villanous countenance which the
small one still presents is not a bit like it.

Yes, my vanity is satisfied, but at what price?
Of what horrible article am I the possessor? I
have made every possible attempt to account for
the perverse reflexion on natural grounds, and
all have failed. Am I the owner of a bottle-imp,
with the bottle squeezed flat and quicksilvered
into a mirror, and the imp attenuated into the
semblance of an inaccurate reflexion?

How long I am occupied with these meditations,
which I pursue in front of the large glass,
holding the small one open in my hand, I cannot
say, but they are brought to an end by the sound