I believe I may consider myself a passably amiable man, and I could certainly produce ample testimony to prove I am so considered by a large variety of impartial witnesses, ranging from my baby nieces to my septuagenarian mother, and not forgetting to include my tailor. I am of equable temper, and charitably expansive in matters of opinion. I generally contrive to find excuses for the foibles and failings of my fellow-creatures, and, had I but the gift of oratory, I believe I could melt any jury to mercy, where an ordinary professional advocate for the defence would only aggravate a conviction. I am forgiving to a fault, and hence, if Pope’s dictum on the humanity of error and the divinity of forgiveness count for truth, I must surely have in me some kinship with the gods. But though I can so charitably temper my mind as to frequently regard murder from the criminal’s point of view as justifiable homicide, forgery and embezzlement as a practical protest in favour of socialism, and arson as a mere tribute to the picturesque, there is one crime I can never bring myself to contemplate with any toleration. When one person commits boredom upon another, he puts himself beyond the pale of mercy. I am an amiable man, but I cannot bear to be bored. Now, there is a class of persons who seem to have come into the world for no other purpose than to test the patience of others. To this class Miss Kittenish most undoubtedly belongs. I cannot determine any other plausible reason for her existence. I have thought that her constant devotion to her invalid mother might have had something to do with it, her usefulness in directing the domestic affairs of the household, her eager interest in the concerns of her five unmarried sisters, her exemplary energy in parish mission-work, or her active enthusiasm in the matter of school-treats; but, praiseworthy as all this is, I can scarcely regard all or any one of these causes as the _raison d’être_ of Miss Kittenish. She was born to be a bore, to try the temper of the amiable, to prove that we are all mortal, even the most charitable.