t will not do to walk on the streets with
her, or intimate to anybody that you know her. No, one's intimate friend
must be _a la mode_. Better bow to the shadow of a belle's wing than
rest in the bosom of a "strong-minded" woman's love.

And _Love_, too, that must be fashionable. It would be unpardonable to
love a plain man whom Fashion could not seduce, whose sense of right
dictated his life, a man who does not walk perpendicular in a standing
collar, and sport a watch-fob, and twirl a cane. And then to marry him
would be death. He would be just as likely to sit down in the kitchen as
in the parlor; and might get hold of the wood-saw as often as the
guitar; and very likely he would have the baby right up in his arms and
feed it and rock it to sleep. A man who will make himself useful about
his own home is so exceedingly unfashionable; that it will never do for
a lady to marry him. She would lose caste at once.

_Religion_, too, must be fashionable to be of any worth. What is a
church out of Fashion? Who goes there? God never will hear a prayer in
such a church, nor pardon a penitent, nor give grace to a striving soul.
That antiquated pulpit! Those plain old pews! That queer-looking
gallery! Oh, yes; the pews are very comfortable; the singing sounds most
admirably; the preaching is God's unvarnished truth quickened by divine
love and mercy. Oh, how it would melt one's soul if it was only in a
fashionable church. And then the minister. He is such a plain man, and
says such plain things; he is all the time talking about such every-day
matters, and makes one feel so ashamed because he seems to know just
what we have all been doing and thinking about. Instead of preaching
about Babylon and Belshazzar, and pouring out his eloquence upon the
antediluvians and the glorious company in heaven, he aims every word
right at us, and gets so earnest about our daily sins that he really
makes one's heart ache. It is unpleasant to listen to such a minister
unless one can really forget the world and go with him into his
spiritual idea of life. Then he does not try to please the ladies
enough. He talks to them just as plainly as to the men. He is always
wanting to have them do something that is not pleasant, go to see some
poor person, teach some ragged little urchins, give up some fashionable
way of life, read some book on duty or some homily on fashionable sins.
True, he is a very kind man, the kindest man in all the parish all
admit.