like Gautier's Carmen, their ugliness has in it a grain of salt from that ocean out of which Venus rose. No girls in the whole wide world lead duller lives than theirs. They have neither the pleasures of a large town nor the freedom of a little one. They may not walk with young companions, even of their own sex. They may not so much as to go church alone. Novels, romances, poetry, plays, operas, all things that could stimulate their imaginations and lift them out of the monotonous routine of life, are sternly prohibited. Perpetual espionage forbids the healthy growth of character and faculty, which demand some freedom and solitude for development. The strict seclusion of a convent school is exchanged for a colorless routine of small duties and smaller pleasures. And yet these young girls, bound hand and foot by the narrowest conventionalities, are neither foolish nor insipid. A dawning intelligence, finer than humored precocity can ever show, sits on each tranquil brow. When they speak, it is with propriety and grace. In the restrained alertness of their brown eyes, in their air of simplicity and self-command, in the instinctive elegance of their
