Paris, March 8, 1887.
PARIS.
ERE I am still. You will doubtless be surprised. I am.
Day after to-morrow will be a birthday anniversary, and everybody has found it out! Ugh! Think what a nightmare the prospect of that tell-tale cake, with its little wax tapers to the number of my years!
You don’t know about the cake. My dear good landlady will observe the birthdays of her guests with a grand dinner. This cake is the “grand pièce de résistance,” borne into the room and making the circuit of the table with its little tapers, for the inspection of everybody. Would you like such a fireworks’ display of your years?
Well, being a man, maybe you would not care. But do not pronounce on me. Just wait till you are transmigrated into a woman to come into a knowledge of our much abused reserve on this point.
If a woman ever is “the weaker vessel,” believe me just here is where it comes in. The idea of home dominates her, though the home itself has been desolated and broken up forever. This is not all in my case.