Manager; Mrs. Babbington Brooks, Second Director and Most Worthy
Assistant. This "Culture-Seeking Club" (its name) has been organized,
mamma says, on my account. It is her last effort in my behalf. She has
always opposed the idea of my forming an alliance with a poor, petty
young lawyer; but she has grown desperate, and organized this club in
order that I might, or rather she, angle for some rising young barrister
with brains, and a promise of something better than the usual
fulfillment--poverty. It is a positive tragedy, this being calculatingly
thrown at the head of a so-called desirable young man!

Nominally I am a member of the "Culture-Seeking Club," but actually
and at heart I am a Philistine out and out. This pernicious high-art
and culture-seeking fever has never caught my practical soul in its
relentless grasp. I love not the ways of the social æsthete. Gleams
and shadows do not thrill me; sunflowers and daisies do not gratify my
hungry soul--or self. Mamma says I am not sufficiently clever to tempt
the brainy monster, _i.e._, Culture Fiend. She has taken me in
hand; I am to play a role also. She has a strange power over me which I
am unable to withstand. It is the fatal power which a strong mind gets
over the more weak and readily yielding mind incapable of a successful
resistance. She is a woman with a bad heart and a clear head. I am
irresolute, full of most excellent intentions, and in effect as bad as
she without the redeeming features of extraordinary cleverness. I am to
play the role of a young maiden with an object in life. I am to be full
of a new desire to grapple with the weighty problems of the moment. I am
to be carefully coached for each club meeting; I am to be veneered with
a thin skin of glittering knowledge. I am, indeed, bewildered, startled.
I am made to read all of the book notices worth the reading. I am made
to pore over a half dozen reviews which people in this town know
absolutely nothing about--although they do call mamma the "Pioneer