good
sense? And she may do this without being one iota less a lady--_if she
is one to begin with_.

Now appears the complication. As a business woman, the self-reliant
young girl does not need a chaperone. As a society woman, this
inexperienced, sensitive, human-nature-trusting child _does_ need a
chaperone. She is, therefore, subject to what we may call intermittent
chaperonage. Business, definite, serious occupation of any kind, is a
coat of mail. The woman or girl who is plainly absorbed in some
earnest and dignified _work_ is shielded from misinterpretation or
impertinent intrusion while engaged in that work. She may go
unattended to and from her place of business, for her destination is
understood, and her purpose legitimate. She needs no guardian, for her
capacity to take care of herself _under these conditions_, is
demonstrated to a respectful public. The spectacle of a stately
middle-aged woman accompanying each girl book-keeper to her desk every
morning would be burlesque in the extreme. The girl who is thus
allowed to go alone to an office in business hours, sometimes thinks it
absurd for any one to say that she must not go alone to a drawing-room,
and she _does_ go alone. Right here this independent girl makes a
mistake. It is granted that the girl with brains and principle to bear
herself discreetly during office hours is probably able--in the
abstract--to exercise the same good sense at a party.

But _the conditions are changed_ to the eye of the onlooker. The girl
who went to the office wearing the shield and armor of her work, now
appears in society _without that shield_. To the observer she differs
in no wise from the banker's daughter, who "toils not." Like the
latter, she needs on social occasions the watchful chaperonage that
should be given to all young girls in these conditions. The woman who
is in society at all must conform to its conventional laws, or lose
caste in proportion to her defiance of these laws. She cannot defy
them without losing the dignity and exclusiveness that characterize a
well-bred woman, and without seeming to drift into the careless and
doubtful manners of "Bohemia." The fairy-story suggests the principle;
Cinderella could work alone in the dust and ashes undisturbed; but the
fairy-god-mother must needs accompany her when she went to the ball.
In the best circles everywhere, at home and abroad, every young girl
during her first years in society is "chapero