But to return to my subject. (I seem to be always wandering away.) You need never be idle in town. A wet day even makes no difference, when a place teems with picture galleries, as London does. They are such good places to meet your friends. You always see someone you know. You might as well be there as anywhere else. Of course you do not look at the pictures. You glance at the few you have heard talked about, just so as to say you have seen them. But you do not go to a picture gallery to look at _pictures_! "We always go the wrong way round. You avoid the crowd like that, you know," I have heard people say. "_Avoid_ the crowd!" It is the crowd they want to see! There is less chance of missing your friends if you go in the opposite direction! There is one real advantage though in beginning at the other end. You don't have the same people following you all the time, nor have to listen to ignorant remarks. "Who's that? She don't look very happy, to be sure," I once heard one woman ask of another as they were going round. "That? why that's Adam and Eve, o' course, and the serpent in the distance. I never 'eard of anyone else who went about without their clothes on, though why they put chains on her I can't think: it says nothing about 'em in the Bible." I glanced at the picture. It was "Andromeda!" And they talk of the strides education has been making of late years! CHAPTER IX. ON CHILDREN AND DOGS. Are you very shocked that I should couple these two subjects? An insult to the children, do you say? Well, do you know, I am afraid I consider it an insult to the dogs. I am not fond of children, and I love dogs. A man may be a superior animal to a dog, but a puppy is decidedly more intelligent than a baby. What can you find more helpless, more utterly incapable, than a baby? Look at a puppy in comparison. At a month old it is trotting about, and growing quite independent; more sensible altogether than a child aged a year. I am afraid I shock people often by my opinions, but they are really genuine. I am always more interested in the canine race than in the blossoms of humanity. Very likely it is the behavior of each that makes me so. Children never take to me, nor come near me if they can help it. I do not understand them, or know what to talk to them about. On the other hand, dogs will come to me at once, and, what is more, keep to me. I have never been growled at in my life, and I have come across a good many dogs, too.