I have watched you this ten minutes, while your carriage has been standing still, and have seen your smiling face change twice, as though you were about to say; “I am not accustomed to be stopped like this”; but what I have chiefly noticed is that you have not looked at anything except the persons sitting opposite and the backs of your flunkeys on the box. Clearly nothing has distracted you from following your thought: “There is pleasure before me, I am told!” Yours is the three-hundredth carriage in this row that blocks the road for half a mile. In the two hundred and ninety-nine that come before it, and the four hundred that come after, you are sitting too--with your face before you, and your unseeing eyes. Resented while you gathered being; brought into the world with the most distinguished skill; remembered by your mother when the whim came to her; taught to believe that life consists in caring for your clean, well-nourished body, and your manner that nothing usual can disturb; taught to regard Society as the little ring of men and women that you see, and to feel your only business is to know the next thing that you want and get it given you--_You have never had a chance!_ You take commands from no other creature; your heart gives you your commands, forms your desires, your wishes, your opinions, and passes them between your lips. From your heart well-up the springs that feed the river of your conduct; but your heart is a stagnant pool that has never seen the sun. Each year when April comes, and the earth smells new, you have an odd aching underneath your corsets. What is it for? You have a husband, or a lover, or both, or neither, whichever suits you best; you have children, or could have them if you wished for them; you are fed at stated intervals with food and wine; you have all you want of country life and country sports; you have the theatre and the opera, books, music, and religion! From the top of the plume, torn from a dying bird, or the flowers, made at an insufficient wage, that decorate your head, to the sole of the shoe that cramps your foot, you are decked out with solemn care; a year of labour has been sewn into your garments and forged into your rings--you are a breathing triumph! You live in the centre of the centre of the world; if you wish you can have access to everything that has been thought since the world of thought began; if you wish you can see everything that has ever been produced, for you can travel where you like; you are within reach of Nature’s grandest forms and the most perfect works of art. You can hear the last word that is said on everything, if you wish. When you do wish, the latest tastes are servants of your palate, the latest scents attend your nose--_You have never had a chance!_