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On Town
by
In spite of their haste, though, they generally find time to stare at any woman who crosses their path. Why should not a woman go to the City? She has as much right there as man, and yet if she is in the least degree superior to the flower girls (?) who surround the Royal Exchange, she is looked on as a freak of nature, a positive curiosity, and is followed by every pair of male eyes within reach!
Mrs. Grundy is inclined to rather overdo her season, I think. There is so much she might leave undone, so many things that “never would be missed.” Imagine the gratitude that would be displayed to anyone who would put down and demolish those dreadful crushes, so called “at homes,” where nobody ever is at home; where you have neither space nor air from the moment you arrive until the glad time comes for departing. Does anyone enjoy them, I wonder! Does anybody like being literally baked with heat, which I am sure must exceed even that at Mexico; where one of the inhabitants of that delightful climate, when he died and went to perdition, found the contrast so striking that he was obliged to send home for his greatcoat!
Still, I suppose such entertainments will continue to exist. They are a good deal cheaper than balls or dinners, and you can “knock off” ever so many people at the same time.
It is well, at any rate, to consider economy in some matters in these wofully extravagant days. When the shops are decked out in their gayest colors to lure us on to destruction, why is it that “just the very thing you want” is placed so conspicuously in the front of the window, put cunningly near a mirror too, so that you see it all the way round, and it appears doubly precious?
How convenient it is, by the way, when they have mirrors in the shop windows. You can look to see if your hat is straight, or your veil nicely arranged, without being credited with vanity. You are supposed to be admiring the bonnets displayed to view, not yourself. Girls make a great mistake when they take little surreptitious glances at any mirror they come across. The action is always noticed and condemned; while if they, instead, went up boldly, ostensibly to smooth their hair or alter a pin, it would be taken as a matter of course.
It so soon grows into a habit, this always looking about for your reflection, and one that is very difficult to get out of. Not that the men are at all behind us in this respect. There are not many of our little follies that the lords of creation do not take up and cultivate. You see them at dinner, addressing nearly all their conversation opposite–where hangs a mirror. At dances they are admiring and smiling at their reflections the whole evening, finding far more satisfaction in gazing there than at their partner, even though she be the loveliest in the land.
But to return to my subject. (I seem to be always wandering away.) You need never be idle in town. A wet day even makes no difference, when a place teems with picture galleries, as London does. They are such good places to meet your friends. You always see someone you know. You might as well be there as anywhere else. Of course you do not look at the pictures. You glance at the few you have heard talked about, just so as to say you have seen them. But you do not go to a picture gallery to look at pictures! “We always go the wrong way round. You avoid the crowd like that, you know,” I have heard people say. “Avoid the crowd!” It is the crowd they want to see! There is less chance of missing your friends if you go in the opposite direction! There is one real advantage though in beginning at the other end. You don’t have the same people following you all the time, nor have to listen to ignorant remarks. “Who’s that? She don’t look very happy, to be sure,” I once heard one woman ask of another as they were going round. “That? why that’s Adam and Eve, o’ course, and the serpent in the distance. I never ‘eard of anyone else who went about without their clothes on, though why they put chains on her I can’t think: it says nothing about ’em in the Bible.”
I glanced at the picture. It was “Andromeda!” And they talk of the strides education has been making of late years!