"Cooking Column," "Hints on Education"--we were full of hints,--and a
page and a half of "Fashionable Intelligence," written in the pertly
personal style which even yet has not altogether disappeared, so I am
informed, from modern journalism: "I must tell you about the _divine_
frock I wore at 'Glorious Goodwood' last week. Prince C.--but there, I
really must not repeat all the things the silly fellow says; he is _too_
foolish--and the _dear_ Countess, I fancy, was just the _weeish_ bit
jealous"--and so on.

Poor little woman! I see her now in the shabby grey alpaca, with the
inkstains on it. Perhaps a day at "Glorious Goodwood," or anywhere else
in the fresh air, might have put some colour into her cheeks.

Our proprietor--one of the most unashamedly ignorant men I ever met--I
remember his gravely informing a correspondent once that Ben Jonson had
written _Rabelais_ to pay for his mother's funeral, and only laughing
good-naturedly when his mistakes were pointed out to him--wrote with the
aid of a cheap encyclopedia the pages devoted to "General Information,"
and did them on the whole remarkably well; while our office boy, with an
excellent pair of scissors for his assistant, was responsible for our
supply of "Wit and Humour."

It was hard work, and the pay was poor, what sustained us was the
consciousness that we were instructing and improving our fellow men and
women. Of all games in the world, the one most universally and eternally
popular is the game of school. You collect six children, and put them on
a doorstep, while you walk up and down with the book and cane. We play
it when babies, we play it when boys and girls, we play it when men and
women, we play it as, lean and slippered, we totter towards the grave. It
never palls upon, it never wearies us. Only one thing mars it: the