to like my little groove very much, narrow though it be--a poor thing,
but mine own!

"I_wish_ you hadn't asked Captain Wareham, Lizzie. Horrid man! I can't
bear him!"

"Dear me, Charlotte--isn't the world big enough for you both?"

"Yes; but your little Dining-room _isn't_!"--_Punch_, February 16,
1889.]

Moreover, certain physical disabilities that I have the misfortune to
labour under make it difficult for me to study and sketch the lusty
things in the open air and sunshine. My sight, besides being defective
in many ways, is so sensitive that I cannot face the common light of
day without glasses thickly rimmed with wire gauze, so that sketching
out of doors is often to me a difficult and distressing performance.
That is also partly why I am not a sportsman and a delineator of
sport.

I mention this infirmity not as an excuse for my shortcomings and
failures--for them there is no excuse--but as a reason why I have
abstained from the treatment of so much that is so popular,
delightful, and exhilarating in English country life. If there had
been no Charles Keene (a terrible supposition both for _Punch_ and its
readers), I should have done my best to illustrate the lower walks and
phases of London existence, which attracts me as much as any other. It
is just as easy to draw a costermonger or a washerwoman as it is a
gentleman or lady--perhaps a little easier--but it is by no means so
easy to draw them as Keene did! And to draw a cab or an omnibus after