and evident fact when he steps aside from the narrow path of honor and
rectitude; while, should she swerve in the least, pouring out
mercilessly its harshest taunts, or overwhelming her with pitiless
scorn. This, because woman should hold an exalted position, and "be
above suspicion"? Then why do not the so-called "lords of creation", as
they might and ought, set an example of noble uprightness to "the weaker
vessel", guiding, guarding, upholding her through "the shards and thorns
of existence"?

The Spanish girl, left an orphan by the wars in which the dashing and
gallant English officer figured so proudly, fell to the care of two
aunts, who, belonging to that indolent, pleasure loving race of sunny
Spain, perhaps left the poor girl too much to her own devices, and thus
she may have been more easily beguiled.

"Look here, upon this picture, and on _this_": first, the gay little
senorita, holding daintily in her tapering fingers a cigarette, which
she occasionally raises to her "ripe red lips", afterwards languidly
following with her lustrous black eyes the blue wreaths of smoke as
they float above her head and vanish in the air; next, the withered
crone, with silver hair, wrinkled skin, and no trace of her early
beauty, sitting in the chimney corner, and still smoking, though now it
is a clay pipe,--to the amazement and disgust of the villagers. Yet
we, believing in the only correct interpretation of _noblesse oblige_,
and that he only is truly noble who acts nobly, have only pity for the
poor soul who here laid down life's weary burden twenty-two years ago at
the age of seventy-two, and scorn for him who rests in an honored grave,
and is idealized among the world's heroes.

How amusing it is to hear the people speak of us invariably as