e soft, pretty hair had often formed the
object of my admiration. Now, however, they revealed themselves to me
in coiffures which forcibly reminded me of the electrical experiments
which used to entertain us in college, when the subject stood on the
insulated stool, and each particular hair of his head bristled and
rose, and set up, as it were, on its own account. This high-flying
condition of the tresses, and the singularity of the ornaments which
appeared to be thrown at haphazard into them, suggested so oddly the
idea of a bewitched person, that I could scarcely converse with any
presence of mind, or realize that these really were the nice,
well-informed, sensible little girls of my own neighborhood,--the good
daughters, good sisters, Sunday-school teachers, and other familiar
members of our best educated circles; and I came away from the party
in a sort of blue maze, and hardly in a state to conduct myself with
credit in the examination through which I knew Jenny would put me as
to the appearance of her different friends.

I know not how it is, but the glamour of fashion in the eyes of
girlhood is so complete that the oddest, wildest, most uncouth devices
find grace and favor in the eyes of even well-bred girls, when once
that invisible, ineffable aura has breathed over them which declares
them to be fashionable. They may defy them for a time,--they may
pronounce them horrid; but it is with a secretly melting heart, and
with a mental reservation to look as nearly like the abhorred
spectacle as they possibly can on the first favorable opportunity.

On the occasion of the visit referred to, Jenny ushered her three
friends in triumph into my study; and, in truth, the little room
seemed to be perfectly transformed by their brightness. My honest,
nice, lovable little Yankee fireside girls were, to be sure, got up in
a style that would have done credit to Madame Pompadour, or any of the
most questionable characters of the time of Louis XIV. or XV. They
were frizzled and powdered, and built up in elaborate devices; they
wore on their hair flowers, gems, streamers, tinklers, humming-birds,
butterflies, South American beetles, beads, bugles, and all imaginable
rattletraps, which jingled and clinked with every motion; and yet, as
they were three or four fresh, handsome, intelligent, bright-eyed
girls, there was no denying the fact that they did look extremely
pretty; and as they sailed hither and thither before me, and gazed