"Well, girls, I think we are pretty sufficiently crushed!"

This was generous of Blanche, when she was the only one among us who had ever expressed any incredulity as to the "Russian novel," as we called it. "The fact is," she went on, "I have come to the conclusion that we have not yet advanced to the realistic period here; we are living in the realms of the ideal; and, what is worse, I fear I am so benighted that I like it best; don't you?" And, encouraged by an inarticulate but affirmatory murmur from all of us, she proceeded:

"Let us all agree to settle down contentedly behind the age in our provinciality; and, that we may keep so, let us cut the realists in fiction, and take up something they don't approve of. I vote that we devote the rest of the season to a good thorough course of Walter Scott!"

And so we did.