confine themselves to transactions across the
counter.  They will occasionally emerge from
behind their fortifications, and abandoning
"cover," will make a terrible sally into the open,
bringing certain of their wares with them.  A
judicious course, exposing to their operations a
large number of timid persons who have shrunk
from approaching the intrenchments, or who, to
abandon metaphors, have kept away from the
counters and remained in the middle of the
hall, where, apparently, there was safety.  Such
dastardly conduct as this is deservedly and
terribly punished.  A peculiarly fierce onslaught is
made upon these shufflers, who wish to have the
credit of attending a fashionable bazaar without
paying for it in the legitimate manner.
They are pursued about the room, no peace is
allowed them; the very worst forms of cigar-case
and card-rack are forced upon them, together
with the least fresh bouquets in the collection.
There is no escape.  They have refused
to go to the counters, and, behold, the counters
come to them.  I saw you, sir, thus pounced
on by the young ladies who had engaged themselves
in the service of the "Poor Curates," and
I observed especially that there was one large
and especially powerful person, not exactly
young, who pursued you with a very huge and
ill-favoured penwiper in one hand, and a worsted
dog (which barked) in the other; and who, having
at last chased you into a corner, succeeded,
by sheer intimidation, in getting a sovereign
out of you, leaving you—which was the worst
part of it—the embarrassed possessor of those
two hideous and ridiculous objects.

Well, sir, you are astonished at all this, I know
—you and your friends.  In your retirement
at the Retrogressœum you all of you hold forth,
I have heard you, on the delinquencies of the
rising generation, male and female, always, however,
being more especially severe on the vices of
the young ladies.  "Damme!" says the colonel,
who seems to live in a state or chronic
mystification,  "if I understand the thing a bit.
There was one of 'em"—this is his
disrespectful way of speaking of the "fairer
portion"—"there was one of 'em to-day sitting
up in her open carriage with her dress spread
all over the vehicle and smothering up a sort of
a half-alive looking creature who sat alongside
of her, and who would call himself a man, I
suppose.  Gad, sir, she was driving a pair of half-
broken bays, that hardly touched the ground,
and I'd have been devilish sorry to sit behind
them myself, and she'd got her white reins and
her whip with a bit of a parasol stuck in the
middle of it, and she'd a scrap of lace and artificial
flowers on the top of her head, and she
looked as if she didn't care a snap of the fingers
for anything—as bold as brass, sir, and bolder!
The horses were flying hither and thither with
all their legs off the ground at once; the
carriages and vans and omnibuses—for it was in
Piccadilly—were crashing about her in every
direction; and yet there she sat with her reins
and her parasol, as cool as a cucumber.  Now,
I'll tell you what I call that," the colonel
concluded,  "I call that brazen.  I don't know
what the opinions of others may be, but I call
it brazen!"  And then another Retrogressionist
chimes in:  "Gad, and I'll tell you what, they
are brazen, and there's an end of it!"  And then
another, a nautical gentleman this time—you
know whom I mean—"You should go down and
see 'em at Ryde, and off Cowes in the season,"
says this old salt;  "see 'em in their sou'-wester
hats and their pea-jackets, with their
hands in their pockets, and with their
telescopes and the deuce knows what besides,
and going out in yachts with half a gale of
wind blowing, as pleased as Punch, and not
minding the sea a bit, even when it makes a clean
breach over the deck and wets them through
to the skin in a jiffy.  Yes, sir,"  the admiral
repeats,  "you should see them off the Isle of
Wight in the season, and hear them talking
about 'mizenm'sts and foksles,' if you want to
know what they're really like."

You all assent to the admiral's views, which
somebody else corroborates with anecdotes of
female daring as exhibited in the hunting-field,
and of which he has had personal cognisance.
Thrilling stories of ladies giving gentlemen a
"lead," and surmounting difficult "timber"
with perfect ease, and coming off victorious in
contests with horses which have hitherto been
looked upon as untameable, with much more to
the same purpose, and so all wind up with a
chorus in which such expressions as  "Well, it
wasn't so in my time!"  or  "Damme if I know
what to make of it!"  are of frequent recurrence,
and in which the word "Brazen" has a great
deal of heavy duty to do.

My dear sir, I don't think you perfectly understand
these young persons. Physically less muscular,
and, generally speaking, less powerfully
built than men, we are accustomed to speak of
women as belonging to the weaker sex.  It is
very easy so to speak of them, though not quite
so easy to see how, except in the physical view
of the question, they generally deserve the
distinction.  Pass in review before you a batch of
your married friends, and ask yourself
candidly:  are the wives in the majority of the
cases to be looked upon as weaker characters,
than the husbands?  If you want a weak thing
done, an unprofitable but pleasant thing, to
which would you go for assistance in the carrying
out of your scheme: to the husband or
the wife?  Which of the two would be the
more capable of saying "No?"  a monosyllable
often requiring for its utterance, at the
proper moment, the very greatest amount of
moral force.

That expression "the weaker sex" seems to
me, just now, to be more than ever inappropriate
when applied to the young ladies dancing in
our ball-rooms, promenading at our flower-shows,
endangering our lives when we would
cross Rotten Row, or bidding us  "Stand and
deliver" in the bazaar-room or tents in which
they hold their fancy fairs.  Of whatever
else we may accuse those fair and exemplary
creatures, we must by no means charge them