The upbringing of Lady Sarah Boodle has been wholly unconventional, and as her parents spend most of their time in balloons, she is looking forward to her first season with all the _fougue de dix-huit ans_. Until she was sixteen Lady Sarah was allowed to read nothing but the _Sporting Times_ and the _Statist_. This led, not unnaturally, to a violent reaction, and Lady Sarah is now a devoted student of Maeterlinck, Mr. W. B. Yeats and Fiona Macleod. Happily this development has not impaired her healthy enjoyment of Bridge. Last year she won £300 at this winsome pastime.... One may fitly conclude this group of winsome English girls with the mention of two beautiful cousins, Lady Phoebe Bunting and Miss Miriam Belshazzar. By an extraordinary coincidence they are both third cousins once removed of Daphne, Lady Saxthorpe, whose coster impersonations were so marked a feature of her late husband's tenure of office as Governor of Hong Kong. Lady Phoebe, strange to say, never learned her alphabet until she was nearly fifteen, while her cousin had mastered the intricacies of compound interest almost before she could walk. Lady Phoebe is a winsome blonde, while Miss Belshazzar is a _svelte_ brunette whose superb Semitic profile recalls the delicious proboscis of her illustrious grandfather, Sir Joshua Schnabelheimer. [Sidenote: _Ostentatious Luxury_] Extravagant expense and ostentation--another old abomination of _Punch's_--were not only rife, but they were constantly written up and discussed with a foolish voice of praise in what purported to be democratic papers. A ducal wedding in the mid-'nineties, which was carefully "rehearsed" before it was actually solemnized, caused a veritable explosion in _Punch_ about the columns of matrimonial gush and statistics--the "haystacks of chrysanthemums"--which deluged the papers. In the picture of coroneted sandwichmen engaged by adroit speculators to puff their schemes, _Punch_ in 1897 was only repeating an old indictment of parasitic peers. He had no quarrel with people who took to trade openly and seriously, disregarding the old fine-drawn social distinctions and contempt for commerce--witness his song of "The English Gentleman of the Present Day" in 1899. But he had no welcome for the newfangled newspaper articles on gastronomy, with _menus_ and prices, puffing well-known hotels and restaurants. The statement of a writer in _The Times_ in 1900 that "the necessaries of life may be purchased for £2,000 a year" provided _Punch_ with food for ironical comment. A year later it was seriously maintained in a popular monthly that, from the point of view of a smart Society woman, it was impossible to _dress_ on £1,000 a year. The standard of high living had gone up by leaps and bounds from the days when to _Punch's_ youthful fancy £1,000 a year represented wealth almost beyond the dreams of avarice.