=Lady Betty's Comment=


In opposition to the familiar precept of a patriot touching the price
and preciousness of liberty, femininity, scorning to be free, exults
in shackles. We hesitate over our own taste, and turn rather to the
crowning of some courageous male, with a liking and a talent for
notoriety. The duties of this gentleman being irksome and his reward
being ridicule, it is perhaps amazing that we stand in no nearer
danger of lacking a leader for want of aspirants than does the nation
of begging for a President. Once guided by a master mind the most
exotic may come frankly forth to meet and struggle with the daily
weariness of dinner giving and dinner eating: may look towards a
triumphant overthrow of those problems on what forks to use, what
jewels to adopt, what mannerisms to affect and what fads to uplift. As
our persons are no more sacred than our habits we feel that our vanity
is never safe; and our present despot, who owns a Turkish taste in
femininity, and insists on the fashionableness of fat, unhappy is the
woman who, like Mrs. Spottletoe of Chuzzlewit fame, is lean and dry
and errs on the side of slimness.

* * * * *

The dawn of the racing season alters the bucolic character of the
roads leading to Morris Park and makes them gay and noisy
thoroughfares--conglomerations of smart traps and rainbow frocks. The
drive to and from the track is the jolliest feature of a programme
that--as is not uncommonly the case where the mighty are