it is a mystery to me
how she keeps it up. Mamma says that she is "wierdly picturesque;" papa
says (but only to me) that she is "a regular downright fool." But they
are both wrong; she is a woman with a sufficient amount of brains to
know just how easily and successfully so-called sensible people may be
imposed upon; and how readily they can be made use of--stepping stones
to the accomplishment of selfish desires. But she does not fool mamma.
They both use one another to advantage. There is always between them a
tacit little arrangement. Mrs. Babbington Brooks never stops short of
a positive sensation. Her methods are bold, startling, successful. Her
husband, an insignificant looking man, invented something, an air-brake
for railway trains, an improvement on the Westinghouse air-brake,
"Brooks' Unbroken Circuit." This, after years of obscure struggling,
brought them into immediate wealth, but not at once into social notice.
Their first efforts in that direction, or rather, _her_ first
efforts, were complete failures. They nibbled about on the outer edge;
finally, it dawned upon her to play some decided role. She determined to
be an aesthete. She built a house accordingly; she dressed accordingly;
and she acted, but above all, she talked accordingly. Thanks to her
wandering brother, an ideal American adventurer, she obtained from
London, far ahead of the general importation, a complete outfit of
Lilies, Languors, Yearnings, Reachings-out, Poppies, Wasted Passions,
Platonics, Heart-throbs, and all the more lately approved instruments of
aesthetic torture. Her establishment was ready. She wanted recognition.
She waited for an opportune moment. It came. Oscar Wilde, the apostle
in chief of the aesthetic school, reached our shores. He brought a letter
of introduction "To the one aesthete in all America, Mrs. Babbington
Brooks." On his arrival he sent her this letter, and with it a note,
written in a full, round hand, stating that he would be at her service
after his lecture in her town, on the eighteenth of the coming February,
and, being it was she, his terms were only three hundred dollars; usual
price, five hundred. She wired an eager acceptance of his generous
offer, and at once set her household in readiness. She invited the
town--the fashionable, so-called desirable portion of it--and waited the
issue. Her gilded net was well spread; her bait irresistible. She easily
caught them all, large and small; her house was crowde