ornaments which are not too expensive, distribute them among your girl-friends; say, in a repressed voice, that you do not care for such things any more. Let it be known that there is one day in the year which you prefer to spend in complete solitude. Have a special affection for one flower; occasionally allow your emotions to master you when you hear music. The hair-ornament belongs exclusively to the lower middle-classes, but wear one article of jewellery, a souvenir, which either never opens or never comes off. Smile sometimes, of course; but be careful to smile unnaturally. On all festive occasions divide your time between your bedroom and the churchyard.

Both these types demand some personal attractions; if you have no personal attractions, you must fall back upon one of the philanthropical types. The plainer you are, the more rigid will be your philanthropy. Your object will be to disseminate in the homes of the poor some of the luxuries of the rich; and, on returning, to disseminate in the homes of the rich some of the diseases of the poor. Everything about you must be flat; your hats, hair and heels must be flat; your denials must be particularly flat. Always take your meals in your jacket and a hurry, never with the rest of your family; never have time to eat enough, but always have time to brag about it.

I cannot understand why any girl should object to the assumption of a pose; and yet a girl told me the other day that she preferred to be what she seemed to be. She was an exceptional case; I disbelieved in her protestations that she was perfectly natural, and managed to get some opportunities for observation when she did not know that she was observed. I must own that she was quite truthful; she also managed to get married—suburban happiness and no position—but, as I said, she was exceptional. Personally, I feel sure that I should never have been married if I had seemed to be what I really was. I cannot understand this desire to be natural—it is so affected.

My correspondence this week is not very interesting. In spite of my disclaimer last week, I have been asked several questions which are not connected with Sentiment and Propriety. "BELLADONNA" asks my advice on rather a delicate case; she is almost engaged to a man, A., and her greatest friend is a girl, B. Happening, the other day, to open B.'s Diary by mistake for her own, she discovered that B. is also very much in love with A. What is "BELLADONNA" to do? I think the most honourable course would be to report in her own Diary a statement by A. that he loathes B., and then leave the Diary where B. might mistake it for her own. This is checkmate for B., because she cannot do anything nasty without thereby implying that she has read "BELLADONNA's" Diary.

HAMLET; OR, KEEPING IT DARK.

A CRITERION OF MORALS.—Astutely doing "The Puff Preliminary" in a letter to the papers before the production of The Fringe of Society (i.e., Le Demi-monde freely adapted), Mr. CHARLES WYNDHAM observes that "there is no such class, in any recognisable degree, as the demi-monde in England." "Recognisable" is good, very good, it saves the situation, as of course the demi-monde is not, on any account, to be recognised. Cheery CHARLES evidently belongs to that half of the world which never knows what the other half is doing. If The Fringe, as it at first went in to the Licenser, had to be trimmed, CHARLES our Friend might have announced his latest version as re-"adapted from the Fringe."

"AILING AND CONVALESCENT,"—ORME. [No others count.]

MR. PUNCH'S AGRICULTURAL NOVEL.

BO AND THE BLACKSHEEP.

A STORY OF THE SEX.

(By THOMAS OF WESSEX, Author of "Guess how a Murder feels," "The Cornet Minor," "The Horse that Cast a Shoe," "One in a Turret," "The Foot of Ethel hurt her," "The Flight of the Bivalve," "Hard on the Gadding Crowd," "A Lay o' Deceivers," &c.)

["I am going to give you," writes the Author of this book, "one of my powerful and fascinating stories of life in modern Wessex. It is well known, of course, that although I often write agricultural novels, I invariably call a spade a spade, and not an agricultural implement. Thus I am led to speak in plain language of women, their misdoings, and their undoings. Unstrained dialect is a speciality. If you want to know the extent of Wessex, consult histories of the Heptarchy with maps."]

CHAPTER I.

In our beautiful Blackmoor or Blakemore Vale, not far from the point where the Melchester Road turns sharply towards Icenhurst on its way to Wintoncester, having on one side the hamlet of Batton, on the other the larger town of Casterbridge, stands the farmhouse wherewith in this narrative we have to deal. There for generations had dwelt the rustic family of the PEEPS, handing down from father to son a well-stocked cow-shed and a tradition of rural virtues which yet excluded not an overgreat affection on the male side for the home-brewed ale and the homemade language in which, as is known, the Wessex peasantry delights. On this winter morning the smoke rose thinly into the still atmosphere, and faded there as though ashamed of bringing a touch of Thermidorean warmth into a degree of temperature not far removed from the zero-mark of the local Fahrenheit. Within, a fire of good Wessex logs crackled cheerily upon the hearth. Old ABRAHAM PEEP sat on one side of the fireplace, his figure yet telling a tale of former vigour. On the other sat POLLY, his wife, an aimless, neutral, slatternly peasant woman, such as in these parts a man may find with the profusion of Wessex blackberries. An empty chair between them spoke with all an empty chair's eloquence of an absent inmate. A butter-churn stood in a corner next to an ancient clock that had ticked away the mortality of many a past and gone PEEP.

CHAPTER II.