with a brave cheerfulness such as you can
wonder at, and never dream of imitating; but there is a limit even to
the boldest woman's daring; and, when it comes to the exposure and
ridicule consequent upon defying the world in a last season's bonnet,
that limit is reached.

I have one other case to recount, and, in my opinion, the most
lamentable one of all. Were I to tell you the real name of my friend,
Mrs. Belle Etoile, you would recognize one of the most favored daughters
of America, as the newspapers phrase it. Rich, intelligent, highly
cultivated, at the tip-top of the social ladder, esteemed by a wide
circle of such friends as it is an honor to know, loving and beloved by
her noble husband,--every one knows Mrs. Etoile by reputation at least.
Happy in her pretty, well-behaved children, she is the polished
reflection of all that is best and most refined in American society. She
is, indeed, a noble woman, as pure and unsullied in the instincts of her
heart, as she is bright and glowing in the display of her intellect. Her
wit is brilliant; her _mots_ are things to be remembered; her opinions
upon art and life have at once a wide currency and a substantial value;
and, more than all, her modest charities, of which none knows save
herself, are as deep and as beneficent as those subterranean fountains
which well up in a thousand places to refresh and gladden the earth.
Nevertheless, and in spite of her genuine practical wisdom, her lofty
idealism of thought, her profound contempt for all the weak shams and
petty frivolities of life, Mrs. Belle Etoile is a slave! "They who
submit to drink as another pleases, make themselves his slaves," says
that Great Mogul of sentences, Dr. Johnson; and in this sense Mrs. Belle
Etoile is a slave indeed. The fetters gall her, but she has not courage
to shake them off. Her mistress is her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Colisle,
a coarse, vulgar, half-bred woman, whose husband acquired a sudden
wealth from contracts and petroleum speculations, and who has in
consequence set herself up for a leader of _ton_. A certain downright
persistence and energy of character, acquired, it may be, in bullying
the kitchen-maids at the country tavern where she began life, a certain
lavish expenditure of her husband's profits, the vulgar display and
profusion at her numerous balls, and her free-handed patronage of
_modistes_ and shop-keepers, have secured to Mrs. Colisle a sort of
Drummond-light position among