other race _should_ continue to exist; did not in the least see anything in the world worth working for, except to get food, lodging, and warmth; and declared that at the very first great reverse in her life she would decline to exist any more. As she immediately, however, demanded some tea, and took a wedge of very substantial cake, it was evident the great reverse had not as yet overtaken her. She was but nineteen, and was as proud of her pessimism (in an elegant robe just from Paris) as she recently was of her last new doll, with practicable eyes, and power to say “mamma.” Her talk of “declining to exist” was only alarming to one at the first introduction to her; “when you came to know her well, and love her,” you knew how to discount this sort of talk, and you simply asked her to have a little more cake and another cup of tea. That gentleman on her left in a brown velvet coat, with long hair, is a poet. He admires Nihilism, and thinks all authority wants dynamiting. Sounds dreadful to hear him, but he is really extremely harmless. His father is high in the General Post Office, and this young man is reading for the Bar. He will be all right when he is called; at present he is a supporter of Mr. Parnell. By-and-bye he will come into a row of little weekly properties in the suburb of Stratford-by-Bow, and he will collect the rents and neglect the sanitary arrangements with most landlord-like regularity. His sister is that pretty little fair girl in the corner by the grand piano. She writes stories about despotism and the dawn of freedom’s day. She looks kind, but is a terror to her younger sisters and her sick brother, who often wish that freedom’s day was really just going to begin, and who know a great deal more about the practical working of despotism in an eight-roomed villa than she does, despite the strongly flavoured literature she devours.