One characteristic of the grim female is her want of womanly passion for children. She may have so much maternal instinct, perverted, as to be on friendly terms with a dog or two, a cat, or may be a cockatoo; but she has no real affection for children, no comprehension of child-nature, and the 'sublime nonsense' of the nursery is a thing unknown to her from first to last. If she have children of her own, she treats them in a hard wooden way that has nothing of the ideal mother about it. She generally sees that they are properly cared for, because she is a disciplinarian; but, though she is inexorable on the score of cold baths and 'no trash,' she never condescends to the weakness of love. If her little ones are sick, they are set aside and dosed until they are well; if they are naughty, they are punished; but they never know those moments of tender indulgence which help them over a period of indisposition not severe enough for actual doctoring, yet throwing them out of gear and inducing a spell of what ignorance calls naughtiness. Rhadamanthus was a weakling compared to the grim female in the nursery; and what she is in her nursery she continues to be in the schoolroom, and the drawing-room to follow. Her children are always causes of annoyance to the grim female, and the first stirrings of individuality, the first half-unconscious trials of their young strength, are offences she cannot away with. Children and inferiors are they in her eyes, even when grown up and married; and she exacts from them the humility and deference of their lower condition. Hence she is one to whom the present generation is undeniably worse than the past; one who groans over the follies and shortcomings of the times and who thinks that good conduct died out with her own youth, and that it is not likely, by the look of things, to be restored. In fact, youth itself is the root and basis of offence; and if she coerces children, she tyrannizes over girls and snubs young men, with inexorable impartiality.