"If you mean that, I defy anybody to find
more fearless exposures of corruption——"

"No, no!" cried Miss Sticker, in an agony
of polite confusion. "I didn't mean that.
Indeed more independent wasn't the word."

"Better printed?" suggested the engineer.

"On better paper?" added my aunt.

"It can't be done—if you refer to the cheap
press—it can't be done for the money,"
interposed the editor, irritably.

"O, but that's not it!" continued Miss
Sticker, wringing her bony fingers, with
horrid black mittens on them. "I didn't
mean to say better printed, or better paper.
It was one word, not two.—With regard to
the Press," pursued Miss Sticker, repeating
her own ridiculous words carefully, as an aid
to memory, " the only question is, whether it
ought to be——Bless my heart, how
extraordinary! Well, well, never mind: I'm
quite shocked, and ashamed of myself. Pray
go on talking, and don't notice me."

It was all very well to say, Go on talking;
but the editor's amusing story about
subscribers to newspapers, had been, by this
time, fatally interrupted. As usual, Miss
Sticker had stopped us in full flow. The
engineer considerately broke the silence by
starting another subject.

"Here are some wedding-cards on your
table," he said, to my aunt, "which I am very
glad to see there. The bridegroom is an old
friend of mine. His wife is quite a beauty.
You know how he first became acquainted
with her? No? It was quite an adventure,
I assure you. One evening he was in the
Brighton Railway; last down train. A lovely
girl in the carriage; our friend Dilberry
immensely struck with her. Got her to talk
after a long time, with great difficulty.
Within half an hour of Brighton, the lovely
girl smiles, and says to our friend, 'Shall we
be very long now, sir, before we get to
Gravesend?' Case of confusion at that
dreadful London Bridge Terminus. Dilberry
explained that she would be at Brighton in
half an hour, upon which the lovely girl
instantly and properly burst into tears. 'O,
what shall I do! O, what will my friends
think!' Second flood of tears. (Dilberry,
by the bye, curiously enough, dates his
resolution to marry her from that second burst
of sorrow.)—'Suppose you telegraph?' says
he, soothingly.—'O, but I don't know how!'
says the lovely girl. Out comes Dilberry's
pocket-book. Sly dog! he saw his way now
to finding out who her friends were. 'Pray
let me write the necessary message for you,'
says Dilberry. 'Who shall I direct to at
Gravesend?'—'My father and mother are
staying there with some friends,' says the
lovely girl. 'I came up with a day-ticket,
and I saw a crowd of people when I came
back to the station, all going one way, and I
was hurried and frightened, and nobody told
me, and it was late in the evening, and the
bell was ringing, and, O Heavens! what will
become of me! ' Third burst of tears.—' We
will telegraph to your father,' says Dilberry.
'Pray don't distress yourself. Only tell me
who your father is.'—'Thank you a thousand
times,' says the lovely girl, 'my father
is——'"

"Anonymous!" shouts Miss Sticker,
producing her lost word with a perfect burst
of triumph. "How glad I am I remembered
it at last! Bless me," exclaims the Lady-
Bore, quite unconscious that she has brought
the engineer's story to an abrupt conclusion,
by giving his distressed damsel an anonymous
father; "Bless me! what are you all laughing
at? I only meant to say that the
question with regard to the Press was,
whether it ought to be anonymous. What in
the world is there to laugh at in that? I
really don't see the joke."

And this woman escapes scot-free, while
comparatively innocent men are held up to
ridicule, in novel after novel, by dozens!
When will the deluded male writers see my
sex in its true colours, and describe it accordingly?
When will Miss Sticker take her
proper place in the literature of England?

My second Lady-Bore is that hateful creature,
Mrs. Tincklepaw. Where, over the
whole interesting surface of male humanity
(including Cannibals)—where is the man to
be found whom it would not be scandalous to
mention in the same breath with Mrs. Tincklepaw?
The great delight of this shocking
woman's life, is to squabble with her husband
(poor man, he has my warmest sympathy
and best good wishes), and then to bring the
quarrel away from home with her, and to let
it off again at society in general, in a series of
short spiteful hints. Mrs. Tincklepaw is the
exact opposite of Miss Sticker. She is a very
little woman; she is (and more shame for her,
considering how she acts) young enough to be
Miss Sticker's daughter; and she has a kind
of snappish tact in worrying innocent people,
under every possible turn of circumstances,
which distinguishes her (disgracefully) from
the poor feeble-minded Maid-Bore, to whom
the reader has been already introduced.
Here are some examples—all taken, be it
observed, from my own personal observation
—of the manner in which Mrs. Tincklepaw
contrives to persecute her harmless
fellow-creatures wherever she happens to
meet with them:

Let us say I am out walking, and I happen
to meet Mr. and Mrs. Tincklepaw. (By the
bye, she never lets her husband out of her
sight—he is too necessary to the execution
of her schemes of petty torment. And such
a noble creature, to be used for so base a
purpose! He stands six feet two, and is
additionally distinguished by a glorious
and majestic stoutness, which has no
sort of connection with the comparatively
comic element of fat. His nature, considering
what a wife he has got, is criminally
meek and patient. Instead of answering her,