m all
out of the window the first month and then retired to a cave on a
mountain. She must have the social sense in the highest degree,
combined with a real love of "the world."

Her personal appearance may have something to do with her success.
Descended on one side from the Incas of Peru, she looks like a Spanish
grandee, and is known variously to her friends as "Inca," "Queen," and
"Dona Maria"--my own name for her. When I knew her first she found it
far too much of an effort to pull on her stockings and was as haughty
and arrogant a young girl as was to be found in the then cold and
stately city of New York. She looks as haughty as ever because it is
difficult for a Spaniard of her blood to look otherwise; but her
manners are now as charming as her manner is imposing; and if the
bottom suddenly fell out of Society her developed force of character
would steer her straight into another lucrative position with no
disastrous loss of time.

It remains to be pointed out that she would have failed in this
particular sphere if New York Society had been as callous and devoid
of loyalty even in those days, as the novel of fashion has won its
little success by depicting it. The most socially eminent of her
friends were those that helped her from the first, and with them she
is as intimate as ever to-day.

II

ALICE BERTA JOSEPHINE KAUSER

Credit must be given to Elisabeth Marbury for inventing the now
flourishing and even over-crowded business of play broker; but as she
was of a strongly masculine character and as surrounded by friends as
Miss de Barril, her success is neither as remarkable nor as
interesting as that of Alice Kauser, who has won the top place in this
business in a great city to which she came poor and a stranger.

Not that she had; grown up in the idea that she must make her own way
in the world. Far from it. It is for that reason I have selected her
as another example of what a girl may accomplish if she have character
and grit backed up with a thorough intellectual training. For, it must
never be forgotten, unless one is a genius it is impossible to enter
the first ranks of the world's workers without a good education and
some experience of the world. Parents that realize this find no
sacrifice too great to give their children the most essential of all
starts in life. But the extraordinary thing in the United States of
America is how comparatively few parents do realize it. Moreover, how
many ar