e of my little artistic delights. She
always had something there,--a leaf, a spray, a bud or blossom, that
looked fresh, and had a sort of poetical grace of its own.

But in a gradual way all this has been changing. Jennie's hair first
became slightly wavy, then curly, finally frizzy, presenting a tumbled
and twisted appearance, which gave me great inward concern; but when I
spoke upon the subject I was always laughingly silenced with the
definitive settling remark: "O, it's the fashion, papa! Everybody wears
it so."

I particularly objected to the change on my own small account, because
the smooth, breakfast-table _coiffure_, which I had always so much
enjoyed, was now often exchanged for a peculiarly bristling appearance;
the hair being variously twisted, tortured, woven, and wound, without
the least view to immediate beauty or grace. But all this, I was
informed, was the necessary means towards crimping for some evening
display of a more elaborate nature than usual.

Mrs. Crowfield and myself are not party-goers by profession, but Jennie
insists on our going out at least once or twice in a season, just, as
she says, to keep up with the progress of society; and at these times I
have been struck with frequent surprise by the general untidiness which
appeared to have come over the heads of all my female friends. I know,
of course, that I am only a poor, ignorant, bewildered man-creature; but
to my uninitiated eyes they looked as if they had all, after a very
restless and perturbed sleep, come out of bed without smoothing their
tumbled and disordered locks. Then, every young lady, without exception,
seemed to have one kind of hair, and that the kind which was rather
suggestive of the term _woolly_. Every sort of wild _abandon_ of frowzy
locks seemed to be in vogue; in some cases the hair appearing to my
vision nothing but a confused snarl, in which glittered tinklers,
spangles, and bits of tinsel, and from which waved long pennants and
streamers of different-colored ribbons.

I was in fact very greatly embarrassed by my first meeting with some
very charming girls, whom I thought I knew as familiarly as my own
daughter Jennie, and whose soft, pretty hair had often formed the object
of my admiration. Now, however, they revealed themselves to me in
_coiffures_ which forcibly reminded me of the electrical experiments
which used to entertain us in college, when the subject stood on the
insulated stool, and each particular