bles, and vast estates
are swallowed up like pebbles in the sea; commercial bankruptcies, in
which honorable names are bandied on the lips of common rumor, and white
reputations blackened by public suspicion; minds, that started in life
with pure and honest principles, determined to win fortune by the
straight path of rectitude, gradually growing distorted, gradually
letting go of truth, honor, uprightness, and ending by enthroning gold
in the place made vacant by the departed virtues; hearts, that were once
responsive to the fair and beautiful in life and in the universe, that
throbbed in unison with love, pity, kindness, and were wont to thrill
through and through at a noble deed or a fine thought, now pulseless and
hard as the nether millstone; souls, that once believed in God, heaven,
good, and had faith and hope in immortality, now worshipping commercial
success and its exponent, money, and living and dying with their eager
but fading eyes fixed earthward, dustward!

Oh, it is a fearful thought that woman's extravagant desires and demands
may thus kill all that is best and highest in those who should be her
nearest and dearest. Yet, if this wide-spread evil of wastefulness is to
be checked, it must be begun in the home, and by its guardian, woman.
There is a movement lately inaugurated, looking to retrenchment in the
matter of unnecessary expenditure, which, if it is to be regarded other
than as a temporary expedient, is worthy of the patriotic enthusiasm
which called it forth. I allude to the dress-reform movement made by the
loyal women of the great Northern cities. The _spirit_ of this movement
I could wish to see illustrated both during the continuance of and after
the war. It is this economical habit of mind for the sake of patriotic
principle, that I regard as a great step in the attainment of the
desired standard for American women.

Another plain fault of our women, and one which in a measure is the
cause of the fault above noticed, is the wild chase after and copying of
European fashions. We are accused of being a nation of copyists. This is
more than half true. And why we should be, I cannot understand. Are we
_never_ to have anything original, American? Are we always to be
content to be servile imitators of Europe in our art, literature,
social life, everything, except mere mechanical invention? I am thankful
that we are beginning to have an art, a literature, of our very own. Let
us also have a _fashio