sbee was a brick, and a real jolly
fellow; and he had accepted an invitation to go on a yachting cruise
with him the next month. Jane Lennox, moreover, began besetting her
mother to have certain details in their house rearranged, with an eye
to the Seymour glorification.

"Now, Jane dear, that's just the result of allowing you to visit in
this flash, vulgar genteel society," said the troubled mamma.

"Bless your heart, mamma, the world moves on, you know; and we must
move with it a little, or be left behind. For my part, I'm perfectly
ashamed of the way we let things go at our house. It really is not
respectable. Now, I like Mrs. Follingsbee, for my part: she's clever
and amusing. It was fun to hear all about the balls at the Tuileries,
and the opera and things in Paris. Mamma, when are we going to Paris?"

"Oh! I don't know, my dear; you must ask your father. He is very
unwilling to go abroad."

"Papa is so slow and conservative in his notions!" said the young
lady. "For my part, I cannot see what is the use of all this talk
about the Follingsbees. He is good-natured and funny; and, I am sure,
I think she's a splendid woman: and, by the way, she gave me the
address of lots of places in New York where we can get French things.
Did you notice her lace? It is superb; and she told me where lace just
like it could be bought one-third less than they sell at Stewart's."

Thus we see how the starting-out of an old, respectable family in any
new ebullition of fancy and fashion is like a dandelion going to seed.
You have not only the airy, fairy globe; but every feathery particle
thereof bears a germ which will cause similar feather bubbles all over
the country; and thus old, respectable grass-plots become, in time,
half dandelion. It is to be observed that, in all questions of life
and fashion, "the world and the flesh," to say nothing of the third
partner of that ancient firm, have us at decided advantage. It is easy
to see the flash of jewelry, the dazzle of color, the rush and glitter
of equipage, and to be dizzied by the babble and gayety of fashionable
life; while it is not easy to see justice, patience, temperance,
self-denial. These are things belonging to the invisible and the
eternal, and to be seen with other eyes than those of the body.

Then, again, there is no one thing in all the items which go to make
up fashionable extravagance, which, taken separately and by itself, is
not in some point of view a good or