bonnet
spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and hats like monthly roses,--a
new blossom every few weeks."

"And then," said my wife, "every device of the toilet is immediately
taken up and varied and improved on, so as to impose an almost monthly
necessity for novelty. The jackets of May are outshone by the
jackets of June; the buttons of June are antiquated in July; the
trimmings of July are _passees_ by September; side-combs, back-combs,
puffs, rats, and all sorts of such matters, are in a distracted race
of improvement; every article of feminine toilet is on the move
towards perfection. It seems to me that an infinity of money must be
spent in these trifles by those who make the least pretension to keep
in the fashion."

"Well, papa," said Jenny, "after all, it's just the way things always
have been since the world began. You know the Bible says, 'Can a maid
forget her ornaments?' It's clear she can't. You see, it's a law of
nature; and you remember all that long chapter in the Bible that we
had read in church last Sunday about the curls and veils and tinkling
ornaments and crimping-pins, and all that, of those wicked daughters
of Zion in old times. Women always have been too much given to dress,
and they always will be."

"The thing is," said Marianne, "how can any woman, I, for example,
know what is too much or too little? In mamma's day, it seems, a girl
could keep her place in society, by hard economy, and spend only fifty
dollars a year on her dress. Mamma found a hundred dollars ample. I
have more than that, and find myself quite straitened to keep myself
looking well. I don't want to live for dress, to give all my time and
thoughts to it; I don't wish to be extravagant: and yet I wish to be
lady-like--it annoys and makes me unhappy not to be fresh and neat and
nice, shabbiness and seediness are my aversion. I don't see where the
fault is. Can one individual resist the whole current of society? It
certainly is not strictly necessary for us girls to have half the
things we do. We might, I suppose, live without many of them, and, as
mamma says, look just as well, because girls did so before these
things were invented. Now I confess I flatter myself, generally, that
I am a pattern of good management and economy, because I get so much
less than other girls I associate with. I wish you could see Miss
Thorne's fall dresses that she showed me last year when she was
visiting here. She had six gowns, and no one of th