body to sit down all day. I'm an eminently reasonable person. It's quite legitimate to walk about for a while after breakfast, which I never do, and before dinner, which I nearly always do; but just as I expect people to dress suitably, so I expect them to parade seasonably. I can't read with people passing up and down in front of me. I always feel an irresistible fascination to look up, which I immediately regret as I see some figure which I have seen a hundred times before, and of which I know by sight every angle and peculiarity, prancing, doddering, or slouching past me as the case might be. Oh, if we could only see ourselves as others see us! I'm not sure, though, Perhaps it's just as well we can't, since if we could, the number of suicides among sensitive people would be awful. They never would survive the first shock. Full knowledge would be fatal, I fear, but half the truth, I think, would be most salutary. I did once when I was young try to start a society for benefiting mankind by telling people exactly what you thought of them in the hope that it might lead to the improvement of the race. I remember mentioning the idea to an Irish R. M. who was staying with us at the time. He got quite excited, and wanted to know all about the society, as he said he felt it would lead to murder, and that he had quite enough work to do already. I'm inclined to think that Irish R. M. was about right. However, the idea never got any farther than Dorothy, Bob, and myself. We agreed to tell each other exactly what we thought of one another whenever occasion arose.
