ly in anything like the luxury to
which the majority of our young people--even the sons and daughters of
men in moderate circumstances--are accustomed.

Our young girls are reared on the choicest varieties of food, served
with piquant sauces to tempt their appetites; they are permitted to pick
and choose, and to refuse what they think they do not like; they are
carried to and from their schools, music and dancing lessons in motors,
and are taught to regard public conveyances as unhealthful and
inconvenient; they never walk; they are given clothes only a trifle less
fantastic and bizarre than those of their mothers, and command the
services of maids from their earliest years; they are taken to the
theater and the hippodrome, and for the natural pleasures of childhood
are given the excitement of the footlights and the arena.

As they grow older they are allowed to attend late dances that
necessitate remaining in bed the next morning until eleven or twelve
o'clock; they are told that their future happiness depends on their
ability to attract the right kind of man; they are instructed in every
art save that of being useful members of society; and in the ease,
luxury and vacuity with which they are surrounded their lives parallel
those of demi-mondaines. Indeed, save for the marriage ceremony, there
is small difference between them. The social butterfly flutters to the
millionaire as naturally as the night moth of the Tenderloin. Hence the
tendency to marry money is greater than ever before in the history of
civilization.

Frugal, thrifty lives are entirely out of fashion. The solid,
self-respecting class, which wishes to associate with people of equal
means, is becoming smaller and smaller. If an ambitious mother cannot
afford to rent a cottage at Newport or Bar Harbor she takes her daughter
to a hotel or boarding house there, in the hope that she will be thrown
in contact with young men of wealth. The young girl in question, whose
father is perhaps a hardworking doctor or business man, at home lives
simply enough; but sacrifices are made to send her to a fashionable
school, where her companions fill her ears with stories of their motors,
trips to Europe, and the balls they attend during the vacations. She
becomes inoculated with the poison of social ambition before she comes
out.

Unable by reason of the paucity of the family resources to buy luxuries
for herself, she becomes a parasite and hanger-on of rich girls. If