n_, that shall be, distinctively, if not entirely,
American. There is surely enough of us, of our splendid country, our
institutions, our theories, our brave, free people, to build for
ourselves, from our own foundation, and with our own material. But
American Women have yet to inspire society with this patriotic ambition.

Not what is becoming or suitable to her, but what is _the fashion_, does
the American woman buy; not what she can afford to purchase, but what
her neighbors have, is too commonly the criterion. This constant pursuit
of Fashion, with her incessant changes, this emulation of their
neighbors in the manifold ways in which money and time can be alike
wasted, and not the necessary and sacred duties of home, the personal
attention and effort which the majority of American women have to give
to their household affairs, produce that _lack of time_ that is offered
as an excuse for the neglect of the duty of self-culture. This it is
which fritters away thought and the taste for higher things, leaving the
mind blank and nerveless except when thus superficially excited.

This duty of _self-culture_ I would notice as one of the demands of the
times upon American women in the attainment of the proposed standard. A
wide, liberal, generous self-culture, of intellect, of taste, of
conscience, for the sake of the better fulfilment of the mission to
which, as an American citizen, every woman in the land is called. We do
not begin to realize this. It is a great defect in our social system,
that, when a woman has left school and settled down in life, she
considers it the signal for her to quit all mental acquisition except
what she may gather from her desultory reading, and, henceforth, her
family and her immediate neighborhood absorb her whole soul under
ordinary circumstances. The great majority of our countrywomen thus grow
careworn, narrow-minded, self-absorbed. Now this is not right--it is not
necessary. A woman's first, most important duty is in her home; but this
need not clip the wings of her spirit, so that thought and affection
cannot go out into the great world, and feel themselves a part of its
restless, throbbing, many-sided life; brain and heart need not stagnate,
even if busy, work-a-day life does claim her first endeavors. Indeed,
the great danger to our women is not so much that they will become
trifling and frivolous, as that they will become narrow-minded and
selfish.

But these vices of extravagance