The book of life begins with a man and woman in a garden, and ends--with Revelations.--OSCAR WILDE. Yes, most fellows' book of life may be said to begin at the chapter where woman comes in: mine did. She came in years ago, when I was a raw undergraduate. With the sober thought of retrospective analysis, I may say she was not all my fancy painted her; indeed, now that I come to think of it, there was no fancy about the vermeil of her cheeks, rather an artificial reality. She had her bower in the bar of the Golden Boar, and I was madly in love with her, seriously intent on lawful wedlock. Luckily for me she threw me over for a neighboring pork butcher; but at the time I took it hardly, and it made me sex shy. I was a very poor man in those days: one feels one's griefs more keenly then; one hasn't the wherewithal to buy distraction. Besides, ladies snubbed me rather on the rare occasions I met them. Later I fell in for a legacy, the forerunner of several; indeed, I may say I am beastly rich. My tastes are simple too, and I haven't any poor relations: I believe they are of great assistance in getting rid of superfluous capital; wish I had some! It was after the legacy that women discovered my attractions. They found that there was something superb in my plainness (before they said ugliness), something after the style of the late Victor Emanuel, something infinitely more striking than mere ordinary beauty. At least so Harding told me his sister said, and she had the reputation of being a clever girl. Being an only child I never had the opportunity other fellows had of studying the undress side of women through familiar intercourse, say with sisters. Their most ordinary belongings were sacred to me. I had, I used to be told, ridiculous, high-flown notions about them (by the way I modified those considerably on closer acquaintance): I ought to study them; nothing like a woman for developing a fellow. So I laid in a stock of books in different languages, mostly novels, in which woman played title-rôles, in order to get up some definite data before venturing among them. I can't say I derived much benefit from this course. There seemed to be as great a diversity of opinion about the female species as, let us say, about the salmonidae. My friend Ponsonby Smith, who is one of the oldest fly-fishers in the three kingdoms, said to me once:-- "Take my word for it, there are only four true salmo,--the salar, the trutta, the fario, the ferox; all the rest are just varieties, sub-genuses of the above,--stick to that. Some writing fellow divided all the women into good-uns and bad-uns; but as a conscientious stickler for truth, I must say that both in trout as in women I have found myself faced with most puzzling varieties, that were a tantalizing blending of several qualities."