the small,flimsy object he is thus pricing, a trifle made up of chiffon, ribbon, and tinsel gew-gaws, knowing all the while that everything of which it is composed could be purchased for much less than ten pounds. Twenty-five guineas, forty-five guineas, sixty-five guineas are quite common prices for gowns at any of the fashionable shops to-day. One cannot, of course, blame the modistes and outfitting firms for asking these absurd fancy prices if they can get them. If women are mad, it is perhaps wise, just, and reasonable to take financial advantage of their madness while it lasts. Certainly no woman of well-balanced brain would give unlimited prices for gowns without most careful inquiry as to the correct value of the material and trimming used for them,—and the feminine creature who runs into the elaborate show-rooms of Madame Zoë or Berenice, or Faustina, and orders frocks by the dozen, saying chirpingly: "Oh, yes! You know how they ought to be made! Your taste is always perfect! Make them very pretty, won't you?—much prettier than those you made for Lady Claribel! Yes!—thanks! I'll leave it all in your hands!" this woman, I say, is a mere lunatic, gibbering nonsense, who could not, if she were asked, tell where twice two making four might possibly lead her in the sum-total of a banking account.
Not very long ago there was held a wonderful "symposium" of dress at the establishment of a certain modiste. It was intensely diverting, entertaining and instructive. A stage was erected at one end of a long room, and on that stage, with effective flashes of lime-light played from the "wings" at intervals, and the accompaniment
