g alone
that He loves cheerfulness. Real love and trust in God--which is
religion, mind you--makes the heart feather light, opens the eye to
beauty, the heart to sympathy, the ear to harmony, and all the merriment
and joy of life is but the sweeter for the reverent gratitude one
returns to the Divine Giver.

One evening, in a greenroom chatter, the word "religious" had in some
way been applied to me, and a certain actress of "small parts," whose
life had been of the bitterness of gall, suddenly broke out with:
"What--what's that? religious--you? Well, I guess not! Why, you've more
spirits in a minute than the rest of us have in a week, and you are as
full of capers as a puppy. I guess I know religion when I see it. It
makes children loathe the Bible by forcing them to learn a hundred of
its verses for punishment. It pulls down the shades on Sundays, eats
cold meat and pickles, locks up bookcase and piano, and discharges the
girl for walking with her beau. Oh, no! my dear, you're not religious."

Poor abused word; no wonder it terrifies people.

How many thousand women, I wonder, are kept from church by their
inability to dress up to the standard of extravagance raised by those
who are more wealthy than thoughtful. Even if the poor woman plucks up
her courage and enters the church, the magnificence of her fortunate
sisters distracts her attention from the service, and fills her with
longing, too often with envy, and surely with humiliation.

Some years ago a party of ultra-high churchwomen decided to wear only
black during Lent. One of these ladies condescended to know me, and in
speaking of the matter, she said: "Oh, I think this black garb is more
than a fad, it really operates for good. It is so appropriate, you know,
and--and a constant reminder of that first great fast--the origin of
Lent; and as I walk about in trailing black, I know I look devout, and
that makes me feel devout, and so I pray often, and you're always the
better for praying, even if your dress is at the bottom of it--and, oh,
well, I feel that I am in the picture, when I wear black during Lent."

But the important thing is that before the Lenten season was half over,
female New York was walking the streets in gentle, black-robed dignity,
and evidently enjoying the keeping of Lent because, to use a theatrical
expression, "it knew it looked the part."

So much influence do these petted, beloved daughters of the rich
exercise over the many, that