From this moment she exists chiefly as a Member or President of innumerable Committees. No sooner does the shadow of a political idea flit through her brain, than she forms a Committee to promote its development. When not engaged in forming or in sitting upon Committees, she occupies herself in delivering lectures "to Women only," or in discussing the Woman's Suffrage question with the Member of Parliament for her district (whom she despises) by means of letters, which she subsequently publishes in the journal of which she is, by this time, the proprietor, editor, and staff combined.
In a regrettable moment of absent-mindedness she bore to the Professor a son, whom she brings up on Spartan principles, and little else. Her home is a centre of slatternly discomfort. She rises early, but, having locked herself into her study, for the better composition of a discourse on "The Sacred Right of Revolt for Women," she forgets that both the tea and the coffee are locked in with her, and learns subsequently with surprise, but without regret, that her husband drank water to his breakfast. She then proceeds to regenerate the working-man, by proving to him, that his wife is a miserable creature for submitting to his sway, and rouses an audience of spectacled enthusiasts to frenzy by proclaiming, that she is ready to lead them to the tented field for the assertion of rights which the malignity of men has filched from them. Later on, she presides over her various Committees, and she returns home to find that her child has burnt himself by falling on to the dining-room fire, and that her cook has given warning.
She will eventually fail to be elected a member of the School Board, and having written a strong book on a delicate social question, will die of the shock of seeing it adversely reviewed in The Spectator.
PLAYING DARK.
(New Style.)
The great success which, in their own estimation, has attended the endeavour to establish a series of Night Field Sports in the neighbourhood of Melton Mowbray, so dashingly led off recently with a regular across country Steeple Chase, "by lamplight," has, it is said, induced the spirited organisers to extend their field of experiment; and it is alleged that tennis, golf, hockey, and football are all to be tried in turn, under the new conditions. That some excitement may be reasonably looked for from the projected contests may be gathered from a reference to the subjoined score, put on paper by the newly constituted "Melton Mowbray Midnight Eleven," who, in a recent trial of strength with a distinguished local Club, it will be seen, showed some capital, if original play, in meeting their opponents in the national game, conducted under what must have been necessarily somewhat novel and unfamiliar conditions.
The boundaries of the field in which the wickets were pitched were marked out with night-lights, the only other illumination being supplied by a couple of moderator lamps, held respectively by the Umpire and Square-leg. The costume, of course, comprised a night-shirt and a pair of bed-room slippers, with which was also worn a pink dressing-gown,—pink being the colour adopted by the Club. Owing to the absence of any moon, and also to the fact that the night was a rather boisterous one, on account of the persistency both of wind and rain, the play suffered from some disadvantages. However, the Eleven went pluckily to the wicket with the following result:—