says I. 'The way to
beat Lizzie is to go toward the other end o' the road. Ye see,
you've dragged yer father into the race, an' he's about winded.
Turn around an' let Lizzie try to keep up with you. Second, change
yer base. Go to a school of agriculture an' learn the business
just as you'd go to a school o' law or medicine. Begin modest.
Live within yer means. If you do right I'll buy you all the land
ye want an' start ye goin'.'

"When he left I knew that I'd won my case. In a week or so he sent
me a letter saying that he'd decided to take my advice.

"He came to see me often after that. The first we knew he was
goin' with Marie Benson. Marie had a reputation for good sense,
but right away she began to take after Lizzie, an' struck a
tolerably good pace. Went to New York to study music an' perfect
herself in French.

"I declare it seemed as if about every girl in the village was
tryin' to be a kind of a princess with a full-jewelled brain.
Girls who didn't know an adjective from an adverb an' would have
been stuck by a simple sum in algebra could converse in French an'
sing in Italian. Not one in ten was willin', if she knew how, to
sweep a floor or cook a square meal. Their souls were above it.
Their feet were in Pointview an' their heads in Dreamland. They
talked o' the doin's o' the Four Hundred an' the successes o'
Lizzie. They trilled an' warbled; they pounded the family piano;
they golfed an' motored an' whisted; they engaged in the titivation
of toy dogs an' the cultivation o' general debility; they ate
caramels an' chocolates enough to fill up a well; they complained;
they dreamed o' sunbursts an' tiaras while their papas worried
about notes an' bills; they lay on downy beds of ease with the last
best seller, an' followed the fortunes of the bold youth until he
found his treasure at last in the unhidden chest of the heroine;
they created what we are pleased to call the servant problem, which
is really the drone problem, caused by the added number who toil
not, but have to be toiled for; they grew in fat an' folly. Some
were both ox-eyed an' peroxide. Homeliness was to them the only
misfortune, fat the only burden, and pimples the great enemy of
woman.

"Now the organs of the human body are just as shiftless as the one
that owns 'em. The systems o' these fair ladies couldn't do their
own work. The physician an' the surgeon were added to the list o'
their servants, an' became as necessar