as though fearing a certain flagrancy in too public an exhibition of her
enchantments. It has hardly seemed proper to her heretofore to be as
beautiful in the public gaze as in the sanctuary of her boudoir. But
now, bless you, she has no such misgivings, and the flower-like effect
upon the city streets is as dazzling as if, some fine morning in
Constantinople, all the ladies of the various harems should suddenly
appear abroad without their yashmaks, setting fire to the hearts and
turning the heads of the unaccustomed male. Or, to make comparison
nearer home, it is almost as startling as if the ladies of the various
musical comedies in town should suddenly be let loose upon our senses in
broad daylight, in all the adorable sorceries of "make-up" and
diaphanous draperies. I swear that it can be no more thrilling to
penetrate into that mysterious paradise "behind the scenes," than to
walk up Fifth Avenue one of these summer afternoons, in the present year
of grace,--humming to one's self that wistful old song, which goes
something like this:

The girls that never can be mine!
In every lane and street
I hear the rustle of their gowns,
The whisper of their feet;
The sweetness of their passing by,
Their glances strong as wine,
Provoke the unpossessive sigh--
Ah! girls that never can be mine.

So audacious has Beauty become in these latter days, so proudly she
walks abroad, making so superb an appeal to the desire of the eye,
thighed like Artemis, and bosomed like Aphrodite, or at whiles a fairy
creature of ivory and gossamer and fragrance, with a look in her eyes of
secret gardens; and so much is the wide world at her feet, and one with
her in the vanity of her fairness--that I sometimes fear an impending
_dies irae_, when the dormant spirit of Puritanism will reassert itself,
and some stern priests thunder from the pulpit of worldly vanities and
the wrath to come. Indeed, I can well imagine in the near future some
modern Savonarola presiding over a new Bonfire of Vanities in Madison
Square, on which, to the droning of Moody and Sankey's hymns, shall be
cast all the fascinating Parisian creations, the puffs and rats, the
powder and the rouge, the darling stockings, and all such concomitant
bewitcheries that today make Manhattan a veritable Isle of Circe, all to
go up in savage sectarian flame, before the eyes of melancholy young
men,