velvet. Calantha mocked at these innocent recreations. "Unlike music, drawing and reading, which fill the mind," she said;—"unlike even to dancing which, though accounted an absurd mode of passing away time, is active and appears natural to the human form and constitution."
"Tell me Avondale," Calantha would say, "can any thing be more tedious than that incessant irritation of the fingers—that plebian, thrifty and useless mode of increasing in women a love of dress—a selfish desire of adorning their own persons?—I ever loathed it.—There is a sort of self-satisfaction about these ingenious working ladies, which is perfectly disgusting. It gratifies all the little errors of a narrow mind, under the appearance of a notable and domestic turn. At times, when every feeling of the heart should have been called forth, I have seen Sophia examining the patterns of a new gown, and curiously noting every fold of
