with what he'd say. But this unrest
means speed-mad, excitement-mad, fad-mad, dress-mad, or I should say
undress-mad, culture-mad, and Heaven only knows what else. The women of
our set are idle, luxurious, selfish, pleasure-craving, lazy, useless,
work-and-children shirking, absolutely no good."

"Well, if we are, who's to blame?" rejoined Eleanor, spiritedly. "Now,
Carley Burch, you listen to me. I think the twentieth-century girl in
America is the most wonderful female creation of all the ages of the
universe. I admit it. That is why we are a prey to the evils attending
greatness. Listen. Here is a crying sin--an infernal paradox. Take this
twentieth-century girl, this American girl who is the finest creation
of the ages. A young and healthy girl, the most perfect type of culture
possible to the freest and greatest city on earth--New York! She holds
absolutely an unreal, untrue position in the scheme of existence.
Surrounded by parents, relatives, friends, suitors, and instructive
schools of every kind, colleges, institutions, is she really happy, is
she really living?"

"Eleanor," interrupted Carley, earnestly, "she is not.... And I've been
trying to tell you why."

"My dear, let me get a word in, will you," complained Eleanor. "You
don't know it all. There are as many different points of view as there
are people.... Well, if this girl happened to have a new frock, and a
new beau to show it to, she'd say, 'I'm the happiest girl in the
world.' But she is nothing of the kind. Only she doesn't know that. She
approaches marriage, or, for that matter, a more matured life, having
had too much, having been too well taken care of, knowing too much. Her
masculine satellites--father, brothers, uncles, friends, lovers--all
utterly spoil her. Mind you, I mean, girls like us, of the middle
class--which is to say the largest and best class of Americans. We are
spoiled.... This girl marries. And life goes on smoothly, as if its aim
was to exclude friction and effort. Her husband makes it too easy for
her. She is an ornament, or a toy, to be kept in a luxurious cage. To
soil her pretty hands would be disgraceful! Even f she can't afford
a maid, the modern devices of science make the care of her four-room
apartment a farce. Electric dish-washer, clothes-washer, vacuum-cleaner,
and the near-by delicatessen and the caterer simply rob a young wife of
her housewifely heritage. If she has a baby--which happens occasionally,
Carley, in