is, _we_ who have got husbands,) not to come home to dinner, because we have more agreeable company which we have provided for ourselves. Girls talk slang, I know--perhaps they taught their brothers! I suppose mamma taught papa to describe a woman in the _Bois_ as 'no end of a swell,' and when he is in the least put out to swear at her. [Illustration: THE INFLEXIBLE "MEESSES ANGLAISES." _They are not impressionable, but they will stoop to "field sports."_] "Now, my dear, shall I give you _my_ idea of the mischief? Papa thinks I go about with my eyes shut; that I observe nothing--except the bonnet shops. I say the paint, the chignons, the hoops, and the morals--whatever they may be--start from here. My ears absolutely tingled the first evening I spent here _en soiree_. Lovers! why the married ladies hardly take the trouble to disguise their preferences. "I was at an embassy reception the other night. Papa said it was like a green-room, only not half so amusing. They talked in one corner as openly as you might speak of the Prince Imperial, about Mademoiselle Schneider's child. There were women of the company whose _liaisons_ are as well known as their faces, and yet they were _parfaitement bien recues_! Theresa is to be heard--or was to be heard till she went out of fashion--in private salons, screaming her vulgar songs among the young ladies. When I turn the corner just outside the hotel, what do I see in one of the most fashionable print-shops? Why, three great Mabille prints of the shockingly indecent description--with ladies and their daughters looking at them. Those disagreeable pictures in the Burlington Arcade are, my dearest Emmy, moral prints when compared with them. We have imported all this. Paris is within ten hours and a half of London, so we get French ways, as papa says, 'hot and hot.'" [Illustration: ENGLISH VISITORS TO THE CLOSERIE DE LILAS.--SHOCKING!]