d failed. They assembled themselves together of set
purpose to be lively, and they were infectiously dismal. They did not
dress well: one looked rustic; another was dowdyish; a third was
over-fine; a fourth was insignificant. Their bearing was not good, in
the main. They danced, and whispered, and laughed, and looked like
milkmaids. They had no style, no figure. Their shoulders were high,
and their chests were flat, and they were one-sided, and they
stooped,--all of which would have been no account, if they had only
been unconsciously enjoying themselves: but they consciously were not.
It is possible that they thought they were happy, but I knew better.
You are never happy, unless you are master of the situation; and they
were not. They endeavored to appear at ease,--a thing which people who
are at ease never do. They looked as if they had all their lives been
meaning to go to Saratoga, and now they had got there and were
determined not to betray any unwontedness. It was not the timid, eager,
delighted, fascinating, graceful awkwardness of a new young girl; it
was not the careless, hearty, whole-souled enjoyment of an experienced
girl; it was not the natural, indifferent, imperial queening it of an
acknowledged monarch: but something that caught hold of the hem of the
garment of them all. It was they with the sheen damped off. So it was
not imposing. I could pick you up a dozen girls straight along, right
out of the pantries and the butteries, right up from the washing-tubs
and the sewing-machines, who should be abundantly able to "hoe their
row" with them anywhere. In short, I was extremely disappointed. I
expected to see the high fashion, the very birth and breeding, the
cream cheese of the country, and it was skim-milk. If that is birth,
one can do quite as well without being born at all. Occasionally you
would see a girl with gentle blood in her veins, whether it were
butcher-blood or banker-blood, but she only made the prevailing
plebsiness more striking. Now I maintain that a woman ought to be very
handsome or very clever, or else she ought to go to work and do
something. Beauty is of itself a divine gift and adequate. "Beauty is
its own excuse for being" anywhere. It ought not to be fenced in or
monopolized, any more than a statue or a mountain. It ought to be free
and common, a benediction to all weary wayfarers. It can never be
profaned; for it veils itself from the unappreciative eye, and sh