And what we commented on them, I and another friendly gossip, namely,
memory, often rehearse; for that trio still stand out to my recollection
as excellent, let us hope average, types of English maidenhood of the
best blood and breeding,--blood not a whit purer, to my thinking, than
flows in any honest veins,--breeding no higher than may be attained in
the humblest household in which Christian politeness is the ruling
standard.

"How pretty they were!" says Memory.

_I._ Yes,--just pretty enough to gladden a mother's heart now and a
lover's by-and-by, but mercifully sparing us those ecstasies on their
beauty which are so tiresome.

_Memory._ Theirs was chiefly the beauty of youth, health, and happiness;
they were all well-featured, though, and had faces which grew more and
more interesting on acquaintance.

_I._ How hard it was to distinguish them one from another!

_Memory._ Yes, at first. But you must recollect that on closer
observation one proved to be the taller, one the plumper, and one
decidedly the younger of the three; then, although they were dressed so
exactly alike,--according to what be, I suspect, a sumptuary law in
England--and although their stout travelling-dresses, drab cloaks, thick
boots, the shaggy shawls severally carried by each on one arm, the faded
blue cravats tied round their throats, were so precisely alike and had
been subjected to so exactly the same amount of wear that you could have
sworn each article was its fellow, you know you did detect a trifling
difference in the feathers of their hats, sufficient to prove afterwards
a distinguishing badge.

Here Reflection steps in and suggests whether this exact uniformity of
dress among British children of one family may not be the outward sign
of that harmony and subjection to rule which, far as I have had an
opportunity of judging, prevail in English households, Where could you
find such a degree of conformity among American girls as to induce
unqualified submission to one standard of taste, and that the maternal?
I am not sure that it is desirable to quench all individuality, even in
a matter so comparatively insignificant as that of dress. But who can
prize too highly the reverence for authority, the sweet feminine
modesty, the domestic harmony, which are expressed in this sisterly
uniformity of costume? All this might have been spurious in the case
just cited, and this harmonious effect at only after an infinite amount
of petty sq