ides. My opportunities are excellent. I am invited every where,
because we belong to a highly respectable and somewhat ancient family
(we have a beautiful family-tree, _arranged_ by mamma before I was
grown); and I go every where, even when I am forced to go with papa,
which, I am glad to say, is never more than twice in one season.

Papa is really a dear, good man. He has not only the love but also
the pity of a devoted daughter, for he does have such a hard time
with mamma. While he understands perfectly all about making money,
and just lots of it, too, yet, _papa does not shine_ in mamma's
fashionable circle. He is a slave to her slightest whim--and she is
full of them. He is ready, and always, to do her most capricious
bidding. Yet they are not congenial; I am positive she never loved
him. He was, even when they married, counted among the rich men of
the community. And she--she was the youngest child in a large family,
with high notions and small income. But he is devoted to her! She
may not be lovable, but she is magnetic. She forces homage from all,
devotion from many. But she is an evil magnet; and she is conscious
of her power, which she wields in a high-handed and a most unscrupulous
manner. Unlike most women of the fashionable world, she makes a decided
point of poor papa's attendance. He must always go with her--and he
does. Often he comes to his home tired out, worn down to the very
quick--making money he calls it--and mamma, fresh and ready, eager for
the social battle which, like a war-horse, she scents from afar, drags
him out with her--somewhere--generally, when there is nothing more
exciting on hand, across the way to that bric-a-brac-shop of a house,
where the tawdry elegant, always weary Mrs. Babbington Brooks holds
forth in an ultra-aesthetic style peculiarly her own. There they spend
the entire evening in what mamma softly calls "a sweet communion of
congenial souls," which, being translated according to methods of the
earth, earthy, means simply a tiresome time over cards, the constant
sipping of a pale pink stuff which foams--dissipated looking, but
harmless. This they drink out of dainty little cups somewhat larger than
a thimble. "Fragile art gems," to quote Mrs. Babbington Brooks, "which I
was so wildly fortunate as to find in a curiously jolly shop somewhere
about Venice, the last time I was over on the other side. Ah! how I do
love Venice!"

Now, there is a fair sample of that woman's talk;