out the world with
every man of their acquaintance rather than with their lawful husbands;
the affectation of asceticism in women who lead a thoroughly
self-enjoying life from end to end; and the affectation of political
fervor in those who would not give up a ball or a new dress to save
Europe from universal revolution.

Go where we will, affectation of being something she is not meets us in
woman, like a ghost we cannot lay or a mist we cannot sweep away. In the
holiest and the most trivial things alike we find it penetrating
everywhere--even in church, and at her prayers, when the pretty
penitent, rising from her lengthy orison, lifts her eyes and looks about
her furtively to see who has noticed her self-abasement and to whom her
picturesque piety has commended itself.

All sorts and patterns of good girls and pleasant women are very dear
and delightful; but the pearl of great price is the thoroughly natural
and unaffected woman--that is, the woman who is truthful to her core,
and who would as little condescend to act a pretence as she would dare
to tell a lie.

IDEAL WOMEN.

It is often objected against fault-finders, writers or others, that they
destroy but do not build up, that while industriously blaming errors
they take good care not to praise the counteracting virtues, that in
their zeal against the vermin of which they are seeking to sweep the
house clean they forget the nobler creatures which do the good work of
keeping things sweet and wholesome. But it is impossible to be
continually introducing the saving clause, "all are not so bad as
these." The seven thousand righteous who have not bowed the knee to Baal
are understood to exist in all communities; and, vicious as any special
section may be, there must always be the hidden salt and savor of the
virtuous to keep the whole from falling into utter corruption. This is
specially true of modern women. Certainly, some of them are as
unsatisfactory as any of their kind that have ever appeared on earth
before, but it would be very queer logic to infer, therefore, that all
are bad alike, and that our modern womanhood is as ill off as the Cities
of the Plain which could not be saved for want of the ten just men to
save them.

Happily, we have noble women among us yet; women who believe in
something beside pleasure, and who do their work faithfully, wherever
it may lie; women who can and do sacrifice themselves for love and duty,
and who do not think