scolding at them because they find the serious business of their lives in trimming their hats and walking-suits, and dancing the German, when yet their fate turns so much upon these very externals? Not the bright, original, self-devoted girl is the popular belle, but the faultlessly appointed floating statue, whose mind is given over to rust and sloth, but whose perfect use of the meaning smile and the meaningless laugh throws such deep witchery over the severe commonplaces of her conversation. This product of high conventional art the young men are not "afraid" of. She does not "know too much;" she is "feminine;" she is a "success;" and some fine fellow soon leads her to the altar in white satin and vapoury veil, while the poor child of nature, who tried to live for something higher than clothes, either never marries at all, or, after a long time, drops quietly off with some insignificant person that nobody ever heard of.
Obstacles to Woman's Independence.
The girls must be dull indeed on whom the frequent recurrence of the above phenomena makes no impression, and it does mischievously impress many of the best of them, so that I have frequently remarked girls of noble powers purposely living down to the stultified idea of their social monarchs. A young lady belonging to the most fashionable and exclusive circle of Boston society once showed me a humorous poem she had written as a school-girl; and when I praised it, and asked her why she did not cultivate her literary talent, she replied, "O, I feel I could do a great deal, I could do anything if I were only encouraged to it. But it is all the other way. Why, it is perfect death to a girl in society to care for such things." The phrase may have been an exaggeration, and I leave fashionable young ladies to explain it; but if it could be said of "intellectual" Boston, what must be the requisite mental feebleness of the belles in other cities?
Whence, then, the fatal spell that compels young girls,
