rifice laid on the altar before
Fashion and Pleasure.

[Illustration: SHE WORSHIPS PLEASURE AND FASHION]

There in her room sits Ellen Gregg, that is she used to be Ellen, she is
now deeply offended if friends forget to call her Eleanor. She is an
ardent worshiper of the Idols. When she was twelve and fourteen she was
a frank, contented, happy girl, simple in her tastes and able to have a
good time in most inexpensive ways. A trolley ride to a park and supper
under the trees she looked forward to for days and enjoyed in
retrospect, until a trip to the lake, a concert, a visit to the picture
galleries, or a shopping tour down town where she spent the twenty-five
cents she had earned and saved, gave her another happy day to remember.
Eleanor is now eighteen and she has been at work for two years. She
needs plain becoming dresses, plenty of shirt waists, sensible, pretty
shoes, rubbers, a rain-coat, a suit, two becoming hats, for it is the
beginning of winter. But she has none of these things. She has just
been kneeling before the altar and has laid her costly sacrifice of
common sense and comfort, perhaps of health, there in the presence of
Fashion and Pleasure. Her face is troubled as she sits there in her room
for the memory of her mother's reproof and her brother's disapproval
stings a little. But in a moment she looks toward the bed. Lying upon
it, smoothed out carefully, is the result of the sacrifice--a thin silk
gown of palest blue draped with a fragile chiffon, trimmed and caught up
with crystal drops and tiny rosebuds. It is a pretty thing. Besides it
is a spotless white outing coat, rough, and to quote the words of the
clerk who helped her select it, "exceedingly modish." There are pale
blue stockings and pumps. She did hesitate about the pumps but they were
there. The hat was there too. She hoped to go perhaps to two dances, she
knew she should go to the theater, for she already had an invitation and
there might be another. Besides that she intended to go herself and
invite one of the girls if she were able to get all the things paid for
before the theater season was over. Last year everything got shabby so
quickly and "looked like a rag," before the season was over but she
hoped for better luck this time. She rose and put her new possessions
away very carefully in the little closet and boxes and turned to the
mirror. The hair dresser had shown her a new way to dress her hair and
she tried it now herself. Afte