it's silly, but we all bow down before it; we are
afraid of our lives before it; and who makes all this and sets it going?
The Paris milliners, the Empress, or who?"

"The question where fashions come from is like the question where pins
go to," said Pheasant. "Think of the thousands and millions of pins
that are being used every year, and not one of them worn out. Where do
they all go to? One would expect to find a pin mine somewhere."

"Victor Hugo says they go into the sewers in Paris," said Jennie.

"And the fashions come from a source about as pure," said I, from the
next room.

"Bless me, Jennie, do tell us if your father has been listening to us
all this time!" was the next exclamation; and forthwith there was a whir
and rustle of the silken wings, as the whole troop fluttered into my
study.

"Now, Mr. Crowfield, you are too bad!" said Humming-Bird, as she perched
upon a corner of my study-table, and put her little feet upon an old
"Froissart" which filled the arm-chair.

"To be listening to our nonsense!" said Pheasant.

"Lying in wait for us!" said Dove.

"Well, now, you have brought us all down on you," said Humming-Bird,
"and you won't find it so easy to be rid of us. You will have to answer
all our questions."

"My dears, I am at your service, as far as mortal man may be," said I.

"Well, then," said Humming-Bird, "tell us all about everything,--how
things come to be as they are. Who makes the fashions?"

"I believe it is universally admitted that, in the matter of feminine
toilet, France rules the world," said I.

"But who rules France?" said Pheasant. "Who decides what the fashions
shall be there?"

"It is the great misfortune of the civilized world, at the present
hour," said I, "that the state of morals in France is apparently at the
very lowest ebb, and consequently the leadership of fashion is entirely
in the hands of a class of women who could not be admitted into good
society, in any country. Women who can never have the name of wife,--who
know none of the ties of family,--these are the dictators whose dress
and equipage and appointments give the law, first to France, and through
France to the civilized world. Such was the confession of Monsieur
Dupin, made in a late speech before the French Senate, and acknowledged,
with murmurs of assent on all sides, to be the truth. This is the reason
why the fashions have such an utter disregard of all those laws of
prudence and economy which reg