Shirley

If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, younever were more mistaken.

Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie?

Do you expectpassion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard.Something real, cool, and solid lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when allwho have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto.

It isnot positively affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the exciting, perhaps towards the middleand close of the meal, but it is resolved that the first dish set upon the table shall be one that aCatholic-ay, even an Anglo-Catholic-might eat on Good Friday in Passion Week: it shall be coldlentils and vinegar without oil; it shall be unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and no roast lamb.