hy, she read, and she drew pictures, and she did
needlework patterns, and played on an old harp she had; the gilt was
mostly off, but it sounded very sweet, and she sung to it sometimes,
those old songs that used to be in fashion twenty or thirty years ago,
with words to 'em that folks could understand.

Did she do anything to help support herself?--The Landlady couldn't say
she did, but she thought there was rich people enough that ought to buy
the flowers and things she worked and painted.

All this points to the fact that she was bred to be an ornamental rather
than what is called a useful member of society. This is all very well so
long as fortune favors those who are chosen to be the ornamental
personages; but if the golden tide recedes and leaves them stranded, they
are more to be pitied than almost any other class. "I cannot dig, to beg
I am ashamed."

I think it is unpopular in this country to talk much about gentlemen and
gentlewomen. People are touchy about social distinctions, which no doubt
are often invidious and quite arbitrary and accidental, but which it is
impossible to avoid recognizing as facts of natural history. Society
stratifies itself everywhere, and the stratum which is generally
recognized as the uppermost will be apt to have the advantage in easy
grace of manner and in unassuming confidence, and consequently be more
agreeable in the superficial relations of life. To compare these
advantages with the virtues and utilities would be foolish. Much of the
noblest work in life is done by ill-dressed, awkward, ungainly persons;
but that is no more reason for undervaluing good manners and what we call
high-breeding, than the fact that the best part of the sturdy labor of
the world is done by men with exceptionable hands is to be urged against
the use of Brown Windsor as a preliminary to appearance in cultivated
society.

I mean to stand up for this poor lady, whose usefulness in the world is
apparently problematical. She seems to me like a picture which has
fallen from its gilded frame and lies, face downward, on the dusty floor.
The picture never was as needful as a window or a door, but it was
pleasant to see it in its place, and it would be pleasant to see it there
again, and I, for one, should be thankful to have the Lady restored by
some turn of fortune to the position from which she has been so cruelly
cast down.

--I have asked the Landlady about the young man sitting near her, the