ll it be?

[Illustration:
Miss Mary Lee Manley,
(of The Inner Sisterhood.)]

* * * * *

VII

An Olive Outline
In Shades and Shadows
Of a Clever Social Life.

* * * * *

Platitudes and Pleasures.

My life is different from the usual social existence of the average
society girl.

I have never followed the mirage of a definite ideal.

I have never been a straggler for social honors--they have been mine
without the struggling. I was born to a position. It is mine by right
of inheritance. There is no strong odor of lately acquired greenbacks
about our old and very respectable establishment. We live on a quiet,
unfashionable street; we are somewhat apart from the world, and yet we
are frequently sought--for we never seek. My grandfather was a man of
excellent parts and much power in his native State. He was a well-known,
important factor in the home of his adoption. His wife was celebrated
for her ready wit and radiant beauty in the days when Madison was
President.

My father is a great man. It is not a greatness hedged in by a local
limit; he is known far and wide. His scientific researches have made him
famous and his name familiar and beloved on foreign shores. Nor is he a
prophet without honor even in his own country.

My mother is a rare woman. She is peculiarly a womanly woman. She
constantly gives her best thought, her best effort, to the members of
her family, always forgetting self; and she is full of the tenderest
consideration toward other people. She never speaks ill of her neighbor;
she is always true. She is always ready to discharge her duty--and more.
She is tender, gentle, firm; there is not a flower which blooms more
full, better rounded out, more sweet, better to look upon, or in any way
more complete, more perfect than she.

I may not be great or entirely good myself, but I constantly breathe an
atmosphere exhilarating and pure--made so by the presence of a great man
and a good woman.

Our house is the tacitly recognized head-quarters for all kinds and
conditions of clever people, and some not so clever, but who--in their
way--are just as interesting:

Social Exquisites.
Social Drifters.
Briefless Barristers.
Men Who Have Risen.
Men Unsuccessful.
Sympathy Seekers.