putable excuse for his celibacy; and even in secular life
it would not be a bad idea to clothe bachelors after forty years of
age in a certain uniform. They might also after that age be advised to
have their own clubs and recreations; for their assumption of equality
with those of their sex who have done their duty as men and citizens
is a piece of presumption that married men ought to resent. Men who
marry are the honorable progenitors of the future; and their
self-denying, busy lives not only bless this generation, but prepare
for the next one. The old bachelor is merely a human figure, without
duties and without hopes. Nationally and socially, domestically and
personally, he is a spoon with nothing in it!

The American Girl

One of the most interesting, piquant, and picturesque of all types of
feminine humanity is the American girl,--not the hothouse variety,
reared for the adornment of luxury, but the every-day, every-where
girls that throng the roads leading to the public schools and the
normal schools, and who, even, in a higher state of culture fill the
halls of learned colleges with a wondrous charm and brightness,--girls
who have an aim in life, a mission to fulfil, a home to order, who
know the worth of money, who are not ashamed to earn it, and who
manage out of limited means to compass all their desires for pretty
dresses and summer vacations, and even their pet dream of an ocean
voyage and a sight of the Old World.

Physically, these girls enjoy life at its highest point. Look at their
flushed cheeks and bright, fearless eyes, and watch their light,
swift, even steps. They have no complaint to make of the heat, or the
sunshine, or the frost; they have not yet heard of the east wind. Rain
does not make them cross; and as for the snow, it throws them into a
delicious excitement; while the wind blowing their dresses about them
in colored clouds only makes them the more eager to try their strength
against it.

That these girls so physically lovely should have the proper mental
training is a point of the gravest personal and national importance.
And it is the glory of our age that this necessity has been nobly met.
For the American girl, "Wisdom has builded her house and hewn out her
Seven Pillars;" and as she points to the lofty entrance she cries to
all alike, "Go up; the door is open!" If the girls of fifty years ago
could have known the privileges of our era how would they have
marvelled and rej