Euphemia's New Entertainment

Euphemia has great ideas of putting people at their ease, a thousand
little devices for thawing the very stiffest among them with a home-like
glow. Far be it from me to sing her praises, but I must admit that at
times she is extremely successful in this--at times almost too
successful. That tea-cake business, for instance. No doubt it's a genial
expedient to make your guests toast his own tea-cake: down he must go
upon his knees upon your hearthrug, and his poses will melt away like
the dews of the morning before the rising sun. Nevertheless, when it
comes to roasting a gallant veteran like Major Augustus, deliberately
roasting him, in spite of the facts that he has served his country nobly
through thirty irksome years of peace, and that he admires Euphemia with
a delicate fervour--roasting him, I say, alive, as if he were a
Strasburg goose, or suddenly affixing a delicate young genius to the
hither end of a toasting-fork while he is in the midst of a really very
subtle and tender conversation, the limits of social warmth seem to be
approaching dangerously near. However, this scarcely concerns Euphemia's
new entertainment.

This new entertainment is modelling in clay. Euphemia tells me it is to
be quite the common thing this winter. It is intended especially for the
evening, after a little dinner. As the reader is aware, the evening
after a little dinner is apt to pall. A certain placid contentment
creeps over people. I don't know in what organ originality resides; but
it's a curious thing, and one I must leave to the consideration of
psychologists, that people's output of original remarks appears to be
obstructed in some way after these gastronomic exercises. Then a little
dinner always confirms my theory of the absurdity of polygonal
conversation. Music and songs, too, have their drawbacks, especially gay
songs; they invariably evoke a vaporous melancholy. Card-playing
Euphemia objects to because her uncle, the dean, is prominent in
connection with some ridiculous association for the suppression of
gambling; and in what are called "games" no rational creature esteeming
himself an immortal soul would participate. In this difficulty it was
that Euphemia--decided, I fancy, by the possession of certain really
very becoming aprons--took up this business of clay-modelling.

You have a lump of greyish clay and a saucer of water and certain small
tools of wood (for which I cannot discover the slightest use in the
world) given you, and Euphemia puts on a very winning bib. Then,
moistening the clay until it acquires sufficient plasticity, and
incidentally splashing your cuffs and coat-sleeves with an agreeably
light tinted mud, you set to work. At first people are a little
disgusted at the apparent