Virtually, these two different versions of how an idle woman passed her time agree remarkably well, and they let a whole flood of daylight into the inner life of the time--on what they breakfasted when they dined, what time the opera began, etc. Apart from opera, the play, and cards, how were the females of the middle class to amuse themselves of an evening? Say they had been busy all day, the evenings had to be passed somehow. There was very little of that domesticity and home life of which we are so proud, for the men spent their evenings at their club, their coffee-house, the tavern, or the play, so they had to amuse themselves with such innocent games as hot cockles, questions and commands, mottoes, similes, cross purposes, blindman's buff, and a game called 'Parson has lost his Cloak,' or else 'Bouts rimés,' which consisted of giving four terminal words of any kind so that they rhymed, and then some one else filling up the blank lines, and making four lines of sensible poetry.[130] In fact, just the same amusements that are now compelled to be resorted to as pastimes in a village home. The better class had musical evenings, for chamber music was popular, but the spinets and harpsichords were of moderate compass, and very slight in sound. They danced country dances too, any quantity of them; and there was the curse of the age--cards--as a never-failing resource. [Footnote 130: See _Spectator_, No. 60.] The women did not walk much. Swift seems to think they did; but then a little walking went a long way with him. He quite boasts of his walk from and to Chelsea of a day, a good two-mile walk each way, as somewhat of a feat, and he repeatedly grumbles at Stella for not walking more--tells her to knock off her claret and buy a pair of good strong boots and use them.[131] 'When I pass the Mall in the evening it is prodigious to see the number of ladies walking there; and I always cry shame at the ladies of Ireland, who never walk at all, as if their legs were of no use, but to be laid aside.... I tell you what, if I was with you, when we went to Stoyte, at Donnybrook, we would only take a coach to the hither end of Stephen's Green, and from thence go every step on foot; yes, faith, every step.' [Footnote 131: _Journal to Stella_, letter 23.]