Tryphena’s attitude toward the social body by which she is good enough to allow herself to be surrounded is a mingling of compassion and censure. She is _la justicière_. She will judge with equity, even with mercy, but she must always judge. She is perpetually weighing, measuring, criticising, tolerating, exercising her keen sense of the shortcomings of man in general and woman in particular. She will bring her standards and set them up by your bedside. Your scanty stock of force cannot be better used than in contemplating and admiring them, and you must recognize how completely she herself attains them; you have no alternative. If one will for ever strike human balances one should have a broad fair page to do it on, and Tryphena’s is already over-written with cramped prejudices. It is a triviality, but Tryphena’s gloves always wrinkle at the thumbs. If she had been a man she would have been a certain kind of clergyman, and if she had been a clergyman his legs would have gone in gaiters. Indeed, sooner or later she would probably have added to the name of Tryphenus the glories of an episcopal see. She is past mistress of the art of kindly rebuke. But I do not wish to be kindly rebuked. In that respect I am like the Roy-Regent, and all other persons whom Providence has enabled to do without this attention. She has more principles than any one person is entitled to, and she is always putting them into action before you. I think it is a mistake to imagine that people care about the noble reasons that direct one’s doings; if one’s doings themselves provoke interest it is exceptional luck. I wish somebody would tell Tryphena that principles ought to be hidden as deep as a conviction of superiority; and see what would happen. I am sure we were not born to edify one another. The deplorable part of it is that Tryphena leaves one inclined to follow her in the steep and narrow path that leads to self-esteem. I find myself at this moment not only in a bad temper, but in a vein of criticism which I am inclined to visit upon persons whom I am usually entirely occupied in admiring. My friend the Bengal Lancer has just ridden by, with his hand on his hip. It has never struck me before that to ride with a hand on the hip is a sign of irredeemable vanity. The Gunner was here to tea yesterday--he of the Mountain Battery--and told us stories of his mules. I think disparagingly of his mules. That a mule will “chum up to” a pony and kick a donkey, seems this morning an imbecile statement of an improbable fact, though I admit I laughed at the time, it was so British. The unpaid Attaché came too. The unpaid Attaché gives one the impression of never allowing himself to be as charming as he might be. What foolish fear can justify this reticence? Enthusiasm, we all know, is permitted to the gods and to foreigners only, but even an unpaid Attaché can afford a whole smile.