as naturally into their place as if the exhibition had been practiced
beforehand. It is a positive enjoyment to such people to detail their
grievances.

With the lower classes, this, so to speak, gloating over your losses
is even more apparent. One comparatively well-to-do woman I know,
seems to have a monopoly of funerals. There is always some relation
dead, and off she goes with an important air, draped from head to foot
in black; the picture of "loathed melancholy" outwardly; inwardly,
glowing with pride; while all her neighbors stand outside their doors,
literally consumed with jealousy at her good fortune! And then the
terrible moment of her return, when you are obliged, whether you will
or not, to listen to the whole account, the description, the progress,
and finally the interment of "the corpse"! I hope, however dead I may
be one day, that I shall never be described as "a corpse"! There is
something so horrible in the word, I always think. It makes you even
more dead than you are. It cuts you so absolutely off from the living.

Then there are those tiresome people who talk of nothing but their
own families. The mother from whom you hear all the ailments of her
children if they are young, all the conquests of her daughters if they
are old. The sisters, to prevent the accusation of vanity, do not
praise themselves, but arrive at the same end by lauding up each
other! These "mutual admiration" families, as Wilkie Collins so aptly
terms them, are families to be shunned.

You do not very often come across men on these "at home" days. If they
are in the house, they wisely avoid the drawing-room; and if you ever
do meet one, he is sure to be a very milk-and-water young man--one who
delights in small talk and small matters; or else a curate.