It pains me beyond measure to say it, but I think there can be no doubt that the accumulated experience and wisdom of mankind goes to show that at the bottom of most troubles there is a woman. Since Eve and the first debacle, it has been woman all along the line. I do not say that it is her fault, but the fact remains. White hands cling to the bridle-rein, and the horse proceeds accordingly. It is woman that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will. She has a delicate finger in everybody's pie. No matter who you are, some woman has got you by a little bit of string. Occasionally you are the better for being so entangled; but nine times out of ten it is a misfortune for you. When one comes to look closely at the decadence of the English, and endeavours to account for it in a plain way and without fear or prejudice, one cannot help perceiving that here again one has a pronounced case of woman, woman, woman. Further,--and once more I pray that I may not seem impolite,--the woman with whom you have to contend in England, though her hand be full of power, is not, perhaps, a woman, after all. I sometimes think that she may be best and most properly expressed in the word "Chiffon." Whatever she may have been in the past, however sweet, however demure, however capable, however beautiful, the Englishwoman of to-day is just a foolish doll, a thing of frills and fluff and patchouli, a daughter of vanity, and a worshipper of dressmakers. Under her little foot, under her mild, blue, greedy eye, the Englishman has become a capering carpet-knight, one who dallies at high noon, a buck, a dandy, an unconvinced flippancy, the shadow of his former self. Be he father or merely husband of the fair, his case is pretty much the same. Both at home (if he can find it in his heart to call his conglomeration of cosey-corners home) and abroad it is Chiffon that runs him. Chiffon must have a house full of fal-lals: so must the Englishman. Chiffon delights in Chippendale that a sixteen-stone male person dare not sit upon: so does the Englishman. Chiffon must dine late off French kickshaws with champagne to them: so must the Englishman. Chiffon must not have more than two children, whom she must visit and kiss once a day: it is the same with the Englishman. Chiffon does not like the way in which you are running your newspaper: the Englishman forthwith runs his newspaper another way. Chiffon does not like that cross-eyed clerk of yours; she is sure there is something wrong about him; she wouldn't trust him with a hairpin, my dear! He gets fired. Chiffon is fond of motor-cars and tiaras of diamonds and eight-guinea hats and three or four new frocks a week, and she hates to be worried about money matters. "Poor little Chiffon!" says the good, kind Englishman; "she shall be happy, even though we drift sweetly toward Carey Street. We must keep it up, though the heavens fall; and when I come to think of it, I have read somewhere of a man who had only