or a secret reflection, has long
lain a feeling of wonder that the world continues to put its daintiest,
most cherished, and most carefully tended daughters through the
peculiar social programme in vogue. Is it not bewilderingly true that
every young woman of position and manners in Christendom, be her father
a Knight of the Garter or a Congressman, her mother an azure-blooded
countess or the ambitious better half of a retired grocer, finds on the
threshold of life only one course open to her if she desires to be
conventional, and to do what is naturally expected of her? From twelve
to eighteen instruction--and in these latter days exemplary
instruction--Latin, Greek, if there is a craving for it, history,
psychology, chemistry, political economy, to say nothing of the modern
languages and special courses in summer in botany, conchology, and
physiology. And then, dating from a long anticipated day, or rather
night, a metamorphosis startling as the transition of the cocoon; a
formal letting loose of the finished maiden on the polished parquet
floor of the social arena. Tra-la-la-la-la! Tra-la-la-la-la! Off she
whirls to the rythm of a Strauss waltz or a blood-stirring polka, and
for the next four years, on an average, she never stops, metaphorically
speaking. She may not always be waltzing or polkaing, but if she is
conventionally sound she is sure to be in a whirl. She exchanges
daylight for gaslight; her daily sustenance is stewed mushrooms with a
rich gray gravy, beef-tea, and ice-cream, varied by an occasional
mouthful of fillet as a conscience composer. All winter she
participates in a feverish round of balls, receptions, luncheons,
dinners, teas, theatre parties, with every now and then a wedding. All
summer she sails, floats, glides, sits, perches, sprawls, walks,
meanders, talks, climbs, rides, saunters, or dances madly as her mood
or circumstances suggest. There is her life, varying a little
according to clime and disposition, according to whether she is
daughter of a duke or of a successful grocer. It is what everyone
expects of her, so no one is surprised; and she is expected also to
keep up the pace until she is married, which is likely to come to pass
any day, but which, as in the case of poor Julia, may not be until she
is thirty. Fancy living on mushrooms with a rich gray gravy and
successively waltzing, meandering, or floating with the Tom, Dick, and
Harry of the workaday social world from eig