Then comes the misery of making new friends; and here I would say a word of warning to those who go to an entirely unknown place, and have absolutely no introductions. The best and nicest folk do not rush to call on new people unless they have some knowledge of them; therefore wait a little and ‘gang warily’ before accepting as your _fidus Achates_ the first lady who enters your doors, for doubtless her call is caused by curiosity, and because she has but few acquaintances and wishes ardently to have more. Of course, if you have an immense house and heaps of money, everyone calls on the house and on your income, and you can soon discriminate for yourselves who is likely to be desirable and who is not; but the ordinary householder should be very cautious about the acquaintances she makes until she feels her feet, and can find out somehow--it is from the clergyman and his wife generally--who is who, taking care in her turn to tell enough of herself and her forbears to show that she is respectable at any rate, and obtaining in due course the same sort of information about those with whom she is surrounded. In London--dear, lovely, unsnobbish London--one can do absolutely as one likes about everything, and nowhere is society as good as it is there. In the country the very best society is dull. In London one can meet with the only society worth having, in my opinion: the society of those who either in art, literature, science, or politics have ‘done something,’ and are making the history of the world. From this country folk are absolutely debarred: another reason, dear readers, why I say live in London, if you can in any way contrive to do so, and do not leave it on any pretext whatever. But as man must associate with his kind or perish, no doubt there are compensating elements in country society that are evident to those who have lived among it all their lives. At any rate, we can live more unselfishly in the country, and do more good to those of our poorer brethren than we can in these crowded streets, where they are nothing to us save a probable source of infection, and a certain source of annoyance and dread.