Invocations and Confessions: "_miserable offenders_" seeming to be a phrase rolled like a sweet morsel, and having a savour of repentance and humility, very edifying! The men do not appear very numerously with the women--leaving them to do as they please. The men going off to their own exclusive pleasures: gambling, betting, racing, boating, hunting, and other things equally useful and improving. All through the night, which is the time of High-Caste revelry, the streets where the great live resound with the noise of the carriages, constantly busy with the transporting of the High-Castes to and from the Theatres, the Dances, the places of Amusements, the Dinners, the Parties, Routs, and visits. To mark the difference of the Upper from the Lower, time itself is reversed; night is taken for life and sport, and the day for rest, gossip [Quen], and _shopping_. In nothing could the difference be more striking. The luxuriousness of mere self-indulgence, which takes no heed of the usual order of nature, and does not suspect that day has any better use! When in the country, there is the same round of busy nothings. Visits, feasting, drinking--dancing, routs, and parties. Women taking the lead everywhere and in everything. Here, as in town, the business of life with women is to flirt, to marry, to dress--the last should be first. The men add to the follies of women some things more robust, but not more useful. Betting, horse-racing, riding over country with dogs, pursuing timid creatures--or gambling, drinking, and feasting. When I first arrived in England, I was amazed, and supposed all women were _shameless_ [ba-tsi] that I saw, whenever I went in public. In our Flowery Land this class [ba-tsi], under the strictest survey and care of the magistrates, are barely tolerated, and forced to the most scrupulous decorum of dress and conduct. With us no modest woman of any rank ever appears in public. Therefore my surprise and astonishment may be imagined. Afterwards these were moderated, and I could make allowances for the force of custom. None the less the custom is remarkable, and will receive attention elsewhere.