But dress has never been dethroned; and,
just as in our own days Dupin thundered in the Senate against the
desperate luxury of the Parisiennes of the Empire, so in the eighteenth
century old Sebastien Mercier lamented that the fear of the milliners'
bills prevented young men from marrying, and so left fifteen hundred
thousand girls without husbands! The great dress-makers of those days
were Madame Eloffe, the artist who dressed Marie Antoinette, and whose
account-books have recently been published; with notes and curious
colored plates, by the Comte de Reiset, and Madame Cafaxe, the
_modiste-couturiere_ of the Fauburg St.-Honore, celebrated for her
exorbitant charges. One has only to consult the curious historical
researches of the brothers De Goncourt in order to appreciate the luxury
and extravagance of the past century. Imagine that in the
wedding-trousseau of Mademoiselle Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau there
figured twelve blonde wigs, varying in shade from flax to gold! Madame
Tallien alone possessed thirty of these wigs, each of which was valued
at that time at one hundred dollars,--that is to say, some two hundred
dollars of modern money. None of our modern _elegantes_ would ever think
of buying six thousand dollars' worth of false hair. At the same epoch
the ladies who had fallen in love with Greek and Roman fashions had
abandoned the old-fashioned shoe in order to adopt the cothurnus; and
Coppe, the _chic_ shoemaker, or _corthurnier_, of Paris charged sixty
dollars a pair for his imitation antique sandals, with their straps.
Alas! Coppe's sandals were no more durable than the fleeting rose, and
whenever a fair dame came to show her torn cothurnus to the great Coppe
he replied sadly, "The evil is irremediable: madame has been walking!"

THEODORE CHILD.

* * * * *

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A Future for Women.

From the last report of the Bureau of Education it appears that twice as
many girls as boys enter high schools in the United States, and that
three times as many complete the four years' course. "Nature," in
commenting upon this fact, attributes it to the great attractiveness of
commercial pursuits in this country, and the consequent eagerness of
boys to enter upon them at as early an age as possible. This is
doubtless the true reason, and the disproportion is more likely to
increase than to diminish, even though the actual number of boys who
rush into a money-making car