e 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 shines only upon its
worshippers. So a clever woman, whether she be a painter or a teacher or a
dress-maker,--if she really has an object in life, a career, she is safe.
She is a power. She commands a realm. She owns a world. She is bringing
things to bear. Let her alone. But it is a very dangerous and a very
melancholy thing for common women to be "lying on their oars" long at a
time. Some of these were, I suppose, what Winthrop calls "business-women,
fighting their way out of vulgarity into style." The process is rather
uninteresting, but the result may be glorious. Yet a good many of them
were good, honest, kind, common girls, only demoralized by long lying
around in a waiting posture. It had taken the fire and sparkle out of
them. They were not in a healthy state. They were degraded, contracted,
flaccid. They did not hold themselves high. They knew that in a marketable
point of view there was a frightful glut of women. The usually small ratio
of men was unusually diminished by the absence of those who had gone to
the war, and of those who, as was currently reported, were ashamed that
they had not gone. The few available men had it all their own way; the
women were on the look-out for them, instead of being themselves looked
out for. They talked about "gentlemen," and being "companionable to
_gen_-tlemen," and "who was fascinating to _gen_-tlemen," till the "grand
old name" became a nuisance. There was an under-current of unsated
coquetry. I don't suppose they were any sillier than the rest of us; but
when our silliness is mixed in with housekeeping and sewing and teaching
and returning visits, it passes off harmless. When it is stripped of all
these modifiers, however, and goes off exposed to Saratoga, and melts in
with a hundred other sillinesses, it makes a great show.

No, I don't like Saratoga. I don't think it is wholesome. No place can be
healthy that keeps up such an unmitigated dressing.

"Where do you walk?" I asked an artless little lady.

"Oh, almost always on the long piazza. It is so clean there, and we don't
like to soil our dresses."

Now