t
night's garland.

The lovely and unlovely beings who are now living depressed days far
from Belgravia and the Row have, it is true, but joyless orgies to look
back upon. Their pleasures gave but a pinchbeck joviality after all,
were but a thin lacker spread over mercenary cares and heart-aching
jealousies--not the jealousies of passion, but the nipping vulgar
vexation with which a shopkeeper trembles lest a customer should go to
his rival over the way. Still there was excitement--the excitement of
outdoing a rival in shamelessness of apparel, in reckless abandonment of
manner, in the unblushing tolerance of impudent speech, in all the other
elements of ignoble casino-emulation. Above all, there was the tickling
excitement of knowing that all this was in some sort clandestine; that
ostensibly, and on the surface, things looked as if they were all
exhibiting human nature at its stateliest, most dignified, and most
refined pitch. The consciousness that the thin surface only conceals
some of the worst elements of character in full force and activity must
give a pleasantly stinging sensation to an acutely cynical woman.
However, this is all over for a time.

For a time the half-dressed young Maenads of the season will be found
clothed and in their right minds. And what sort of a right mind is it?
We know the kind of preparation which they have had for the business of
the season--for flirting, husband-hunting, waltzing, dressing so as to
escape the regulations of the police, and the rest. For this their
training has been perfect. But wise men agree that education should
comprehend training for all the parts of life equally--for pleasure not
less than for business, for hours of relaxation as well as for hours of
strain and pressure, for leisure just as much as for active occupation.
Education is supposed to arm us at every point. Nobody in this world was
ever perfectly educated. Everybody has at least one side on which he is
weak--one quarter where temptations are either not irresistible, or else
are not recognised as alluring to what is wrong. But we all know that
training, though never perfect, can make the difference between a
decently right and happy life and a bad, corrupt half-life or no life.
What does training do for the nimble-footed young beauties of the London
ball-room? It makes them nimble-footed, we admit. And what else?

The root-idea of the training of girls of the uppermost class in this
country is perhap