CONTENTS.
chapter. Page.
- The Algebra of Love, Plus other Things [9]
- The Honorary Trier [19]
- The Man in the Ironed Mask [27]
- The Club gets Advertised [43]
- The Princess of Portman Square [50]
- The Grammar of Love [86]
- The Idyl of Trepolpen [98]
- More about the Cherub [125]
- Of Wives and their Mistresses [133]
- The Good Young Men who Lived [147]
- Adventures in Search of the Pole [161]
- The Arithmetic and Physiology of Love [188]
- The English Shakespeare [198]
- The Old Young Woman and the New [224]
- The Mysterious Advertiser [244]
- The Club Becomes Popular [264]
- A Musical Bar [277]
- The Beautiful Ghoul [291]
- La Femme Incomprise [308]
- The Inaugural Soiree [319]
THE OLD MAIDS' CLUB.
CHAPTER I.
THE ALGEBRA OF LOVE, PLUS OTHER THINGS.
The Old Maids' Club was founded by Lillie Dulcimer in her sweet seventeenth year. She had always been precocious and could analyze her own sensations before she could spell. In fact she divided her time between making sensations and analyzing them. She never spoke Early English—the dialect which so enraged Dr. Johnson—but, like John Stuart Mill, she wrote a classical style from childhood. She kept a diary, not necessarily as a guarantee of good faith, but for publication only. It was labelled "Lillie Day by Day," and was posted up from her fifth year. Judging by the analogy of the rest, one might construct the entry for the first day of her life. If she had been able to record her thoughts, her diary would probably have begun thus:—