their annual procession. They anticipate time, and make an image when it
is not November, and sell it at the market of the kerb.

Hear, moreover, the songs which some nameless one makes for the citizens,
perhaps in thoughtful renunciation of the making of their laws. These,
too, seem to have for their inspiration the universal taunt. They are,
indeed, most in vogue when they have no meaning at all--this it is that
makes the _succes fou_ (and here Paris is of one mind with London) of
the street; but short of such a triumph, and when a meaning is
discernible, it is an irony.

Bank Holiday courtship (if the inappropriate word can be pardoned) seems
to be done, in real life, entirely by banter. And it is the strangest
thing to find that the banter of women by men is the most mocking in the
exchange. If the burlesque of the maid's tongue is provocative, that of
the man's is derisive. Somewhat of the order of things as they stood
before they were inverted seems to remain, nevertheless, as a memory;
nay, to give the inversion a kind of lagging interest. Irony is made
more complete by the remembrance, and by an implicit allusion to the
state of courtship in other classes, countries, or times. Such an
allusion no doubt gives all its peculiar twang to the burlesque of love.

With the most strange submission these Englishwomen in their millions
undergo all degrees of derision from the tongues of men who are their
mates, equals, contemporaries, perhaps in some obscure sense their
suitors, and in a strolling manner, with one knows not what ungainly
motive of reserve, even their admirers. Nor from their tongues only;
for, to pass the time, the holiday swain annoys the girl; and if he wears
her hat, it is ten to one that he has plucked it off with a humorous
disregard of her dreadful pins.