I have often wished that, for the sake of
the poorer women, the wealthy ones would set a fashion of extreme
simplicity of costume for church-going. Every female thing has an
inalienable right to make herself as lovely as possible; and these
graceful, clever women of fashion would know as well how to make
simplicity charming as does the _grande dame_ of France, who is never
more _grande dame_ than when, in plain little bonnet, simple gown, and a
bit of a fichu, she attends her church.

These bright butterflies have all the long week to flutter their
magnificence in. Their lunches, dinners, teas, dances, games, yachts,
links, race-courses--everyone gives occasion for glorious display. Will
they not, then, be sweetly demure on Sunday for the sake of the
"picture," spare their sisters the agony of craving for like beautiful
apparel? for God has made them so, and they can't help wanting to be
lovely, too.

Perhaps some day a woman of fashion, simply clad, will turn up her
pretty nose contemptuously at splendour of dress at church service, and
whisper, "What bad form!"

Then, indeed, as the tide sets her way, she will realize her power, and
the church will have many more attendants. The very poor woman will not
be so cruelly humiliated, and the wage-earning girl, who puts so much of
her money into finery, will have a more artistic and more suitable model
to follow.

And you are beginning to think that free silver is not the only mad idea
that has been put forward by a seemingly sane person. Ah, well, it's
sixteen to one, you know, that this is both first and last of the church
dress-reform.

To those two little maids who so anxiously inquire "if I believe prayer
is of any real service, and why, since my own could not always have been
answered," I can only say, they being in a minority, I have no authority
to answer their question here. Perhaps, though, they may recall the fact
that their loving mothers tenderly refused some of their most passionate
demands in babyhood. And we are yet but children, who often pray
improperly to our Father.

_CHAPTER XVII

A DAILY UNPLEASANTNESS_

What is the most unpleasant experience in the daily life of a young
actress?

Without pause for thought, and most emphatically too, I answer, her
passing unattended through the city streets at night; that is made
unalloyed misery, through terror and humiliation. The backwoods girl
makes her lonely way through the forest by blazed t