ominally I am a member of the "Culture-Seeking Club," but actually
and at heart I am a Philistine out and out. This pernicious high-art
and culture-seeking fever has never caught my practical soul in its
relentless grasp. I love not the ways of the social aesthete. Gleams
and shadows do not thrill me; sunflowers and daisies do not gratify my
hungry soul--or self. Mamma says I am not sufficiently clever to tempt
the brainy monster, _i.e._, Culture Fiend. She has taken me in
hand; I am to play a role also. She has a strange power over me which I
am unable to withstand. It is the fatal power which a strong mind gets
over the more weak and readily yielding mind incapable of a successful
resistance. She is a woman with a bad heart and a clear head. I am
irresolute, full of most excellent intentions, and in effect as bad as
she without the redeeming features of extraordinary cleverness. I am to
play the role of a young maiden with an object in life. I am to be full
of a new desire to grapple with the weighty problems of the moment. I am
to be carefully coached for each club meeting; I am to be veneered with
a thin skin of glittering knowledge. I am, indeed, bewildered, startled.
I am made to read all of the book notices worth the reading. I am made
to pore over a half dozen reviews which people in this town know
absolutely nothing about--although they do call mamma the "Pioneer
introducer of good Periodicals." I am superficial, but she is not. She
reads each good book itself, not the criticism only. She reads it
carefully, thoroughly, as few other people ever do. Then she gives me a
special line of thought to follow, and I am made to go through a little
combination of what I have read and of that which she has told me in her
direct, compact manner. Thus does she enable me to produce a written
paper which never fails to start the "Culture-Seeking Club" into a
little flutter of supposed intellectual excitement. For a moment, at
least, I am forgotten, or, if remembered at all, they say to one another
as they sip that everlasting pale pink foam out of the "dainty art gems
from Venice, you know:" "Ah, Sophia Gilder is her more clever mamma's
own daughter; but, alas! she will never be such a woman as her
mother--the gifted Mrs. John Robert Gilder, the life and soul of our
Culture-Seeking Club!" And I piously hope to heaven that I may be saved
from such a fate, and never be the woman that I know mamma to be!

My last effort was said