lean shirt to be hanged in, and that
is more than you, Carlyle, would ever have done in his place."

It was the association of the scaffold with an ignoble victim which
banished black satin from the London world. Because a foul-hearted
murderess[2] elected to be hanged in this material, Englishwomen
refused for years to wear it, and many bales of black satin languished
on the drapers' shelves,--a memorable instance of the significance
which attaches itself to dress. The caprices of fashion do more than
illustrate a woman's capacity or incapacity for selection. They
mirror her inward refinements, and symbolize those feminine virtues
and vanities which are so closely akin as to be occasionally
undistinguishable.

[Footnote 2: Mrs. Manning.]

"A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn,"

mocked Pope; and woman smiles at the satire, knowing more about the
matter than Pope could ever have known, and seeing a little sparkle
of truth glimmering beneath the gibe. Fashion fluctuates from one
charming absurdity to another, and each in turn is welcomed and
dismissed; through each in turn woman endeavours to reveal her own
elusive personality. Poets no longer praise With Herrick the brave
vibrations of her petticoats. Ambassadors no longer describe her
caps and ribbons in their official documents. Novelists no longer
devote twenty pages, as did the admirable Richardson, to the wedding
finery of their heroines. Men have ceased to be vitally interested
in dress, but none the less are they sensitive to its influence and
enslaved by its results; while women, preserving through the
centuries the great traditions of their sex, still rate at its utmost
value the prize for which Eve sold her freehold in the Garden of
Paradise.

"The Greatest of These is Charity"

_Mrs. James Gordon Harrington Balderston to Mrs. Lapham Shepherd_

MY DEAR MRS. SHEPHERD,

Will you pardon me for this base encroachment on your time? Busy women
are the only ones who ever _have_ any time, so the rest of the world
is forced to steal from them. And then all that you organize is so
successful that every one turns naturally to you for advice and
assistance, as I am turning now. A really charming woman, a Miss
Alexandrina Ramsay, who has lived for years in Italy, is anxious to
give a series of lectures on Dante. I am sure they will be interesting,
for she can put so much local colour into them, and I understand she
is a fluent Italian scholar. He