myriad other worlds that are rushing down beside us through the
eternal silence--were put into the heavens to make the sky look
interesting for us at night; and the moon with its dark mysteries and
ever-hidden face is an arrangement for us to flirt under.

I fear we are most of us like Mrs. Poyser's bantam cock, who fancied
the sun got up every morning to hear him crow. "'Tis vanity that
makes the world go round." I don't believe any man ever existed
without vanity, and if he did he would be an extremely uncomfortable
person to have anything to do with. He would, of course, be a very
good man, and we should respect him very much. He would be a very
admirable man--a man to be put under a glass case and shown round as a
specimen--a man to be stuck upon a pedestal and copied, like a school
exercise--a man to be reverenced, but not a man to be loved, not a
human brother whose hand we should care to grip. Angels may be very
excellent sort of folk in their way, but we, poor mortals, in our
present state, would probably find them precious slow company. Even
mere good people are rather depressing. It is in our faults and
failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find
sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in
our follies that we are at one. Some of us are pious, some of us are
generous. Some few of us are honest, comparatively speaking; and
some, fewer still, may possibly be truthful. But in vanity and
kindred weaknesses we can all join hands. Vanity is one of those
touches of nature that make the whole world kin. From the Indian
hunter, proud of his belt of scalps, to the European general, swelling
beneath his row of stars and medals; from the Chinese, gleeful at the
length of his pigtail, to the "professional beauty," suffering
tortures in order that her waist may resemble a peg-top; from
draggle-tailed little Polly Stiggins, strutting through Seven Dials