oon as she begins to
manipulate and improve. If a sensible fashion lifts the gown out of the
mud, she raises hers midway to her knee. If the absurd structure of wire
and buckram, once called a bonnet, is modified to something that shall
protect the wearer's face without putting out the eyes of her companion,
she cuts hers down to four straws and a rosebud, or a tag of lace and a
bunch of glass beads.

If there is a reaction against an excess of Rowland's Macassar, and hair
shiny and sticky with grease is thought less nice than if left clean and
healthy crisp, she dries and frizzes and sticks hers out on end like
certain savages in Africa, or lets it wander down her back like Madge
Wildfire's, and thinks herself all the more beautiful the nearer she
approaches in look to a maniac or a negress. With purity of taste she
has lost also that far more precious purity and delicacy of perception
which sometimes mean more than appears on the surface. What the
_demi-monde_ does in its frantic efforts to excite attention, she also
does in imitation. If some fashionable _devergondee en evidence_ is
reported to have come out with her dress below her shoulder-blades, and
a gold strap for all the sleeve thought necessary, the girl of the
period follows suit next day; and then wonders that men sometimes
mistake her for her prototype, or that mothers of girls not quite so far
gone as herself refuse her as a companion for their daughters. She has
blunted the fine edges of feeling so much that she cannot understand why
she should be condemned for an imitation of form which does not include
imitation of fact; she cannot be made to see that modesty of appearance
and virtue ought to be inseparable, and that no good girl can afford to
appear bad, under penalty of receiving the contempt awarded to the bad.

This imitation of the _demi-monde_ in dress leads to something in manner
and feeling, not quite so pronounced, perhaps, but far too like to be
honorable to herself or satisfactory to her friends. It leads to slang,
bold talk, and fastness; to the love of pleasure and indifference to
duty; to the desire of money before either love or happiness; to
uselessness at home, dissatisfaction with the monotony of ordinary life,
and horror of all useful work; in a word, to the worst forms of luxury
and selfishness, to the most fatal effects arising from want of high
principle and absence of tender feeling.

The girl of the period envies the queens of