convenient to have two eyes and a stereoscopic vision, just as it is
convenient to have four fingers on the hand and one thumb instead of five
thumbs. Our members have been developed in the manner best fitted to enable
us to fight our battle. And the more perfectly they fulfil that supreme
condition the more beautiful we declare them to be. Our ideas of beauty,
therefore, are not absolute; they are conditional. They are the humble
servants of our necessity. Two eyes are necessary for us to get about our
business, and so we fall in love with two eyes, and the more perfect they
are for their work the more we fall in love with them, and the more
beautiful we declare them to be.

I think that Peggy, nursing her one-eyed cat there in the sun, has not yet
accepted our creed of beauty. She will be as conventional as the rest of us
when her frocks are longer.




ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF HATS


The other day I went into a hatter's to get my hat ironed. It had been
ruffled by the weather, and I had a reason for wishing it to look as new
and glossy as possible. And as I waited and watched the process of
polishing, the hatter talked to me on the subject that really interested
him--that is, the subject of hats and heads.

"Yes," said he, in reply to some remark I had made; "there's a wonderful
difference in the shape of 'eads _and_ the size. Now your 'ead is what you
may call an ord'nary 'ead. I mean to say," he added, no doubt seeing a