every art attempting to keep the color in her cheek, and the
wrinkles off her brow, attempting, without any success, all the arts
of the belle,--an old flirt, a poor, miserable butterfly without any
wings.

If anything on the earth is beautiful to my eye, it is an aged woman;
her hair floating back over the wrinkled brow, not frosted, but white
with the blossoms of the tree of life; her voice tender with
past memories, and her face a benediction. The children pull at
grandmother's dress as she passes through the room, and almost pull
her down in her weakness; yet she has nothing but a cake, or a candy,
or a kind word for the little darlings. When she goes away from us
there is a shadow on the table, a shadow on the hearth, and a shadow
in the dwelling.

But if anything on earth is distressful to look at, it is an old woman
ashamed of being old. What with paint and false hair, she is too much
for my gravity. I laugh, even in church, when I see her coming. One of
the worst looking birds I know of is a peacock after it has lost its
feathers. I would not give one lock of my mother's gray hair for fifty
thousand such caricatures of old age. The first time you find these
faithful disciples of the ball-room diligently engaged and happy in
the duties of the home circle, send me word, for I would go a great
way to see such a phenomenon. These creatures have no home. Their
children unwashed. Their furniture undusted. Their china closets
disordered. The house a scene of confusion, misrule, cheerlessness,
and dirt. One would think you might discover even amid the witcheries
of the ball-room the sickening odors of the unswept, unventilated, and
unclean domestic apartments.

These dissipations extinguish all love of usefulness. How could you
expect one to be interested in the alleviations of the world's misery,
while there is a question to be decided about the size of a glove
or the shade of a pongee? How many of these men and women of the
ball-room visit the poor, or help dress the wounds of a returned
soldier in the hospital? When did the world ever see a perpetual
dancer distributing tracts? Such persons are turned in upon
themselves. And it is very poor pasture!

This gilded sphere is utterly bedwarfing to intellect and soul. This
constant study of little things; this harassing anxiety about
dress; this talk of fashionable infinitesimals; this shoe-pinched,
hair-frizzled, fringe-spattered group--that simper and look askance