Yesterday as I strolled through this little Hampshire village, I passed a woman with a baby in her arms, followed by a chubby boy of about three, whose little trousers had only just emerged from the petticoat stage. He lingered behind his mother, and drew across his pursed-up lips and his puffed-out red cheeks the instrument called a mouth harmonica, and drank in rapturously his own celestial harmonies.
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Now that it is the fashion, as well as the necessity, for women to earn their own living, and when they are crowding into all the employments hitherto sacred to men (and in some of which they are exceedingly out of place) one wonders that they so rarely take to a profession—or, rather, to one branch of it—which seems so distinctly adapted to their characteristic talents; and that is domestic architecture.
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In the way of rulers there is nothing quite so nice as a king. A king focuses one’s patriotism, and being above everybody in his kingdom is probably the only person in it who arouses no envy. The fact is he inspires in us a sense of proud proprietorship. We rejoice that he has the loveliest of queens, and the lovelier she looks the more we are gratified, just as if she were one of the family. So when the king’s diplomacy wins a bloodless victory we are as proud as if most of the credit belonged to us.
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