onheur are in a more
beautiful style of hair-dressing than the most elaborate edifice of
curls, rats, and waterfalls that is erected on any fair head
now-a-days."

"O Mr. Crowfield! you hit us all now," cried several voices.

"I know it, girls,--I know it. I admit that you are all looking very
pretty; but I do maintain that you are none of you doing yourselves
justice, and that Nature, if you would only follow her, would do better
for you than all these elaborations. A short crop of your own hair, that
you could brush out in ten minutes every morning, would have a more
real, healthy beauty than the elaborate structures which cost you hours
of time, and give you the headache besides. I speak of the short
crop,--to put the case at the very lowest figure,--for many of you have
lovely hair of different lengths, and susceptible of a variety of
arrangements, if you did not suppose yourself obliged to build after a
foreign pattern, instead of following out the intentions of the great
Artist who made you.

"Is it necessary absolutely that every woman and girl should look
exactly like every other one? There are women whom Nature makes with
wavy or curly hair: let them follow her. There are those whom she makes
with soft and smooth locks, and with whom crinkling and craping is only
a sham. They look very pretty with it, to be sure; but, after all, is
there but one style of beauty? and might they not look prettier in
cultivating the style which Nature seemed to have intended for them?

"As to the floods of false jewelry, glass beads, and tinsel finery which
seem to be sweeping over the toilet of our women, I must protest that
they are vulgarizing the taste, and having a seriously bad effect on the
delicacy of artistic perception. It is almost impossible to manage such
material and give any kind of idea of neatness or purity; for the least
wear takes away their newness. And of all disreputable things, tumbled,
rumpled, and tousled finery is the most disreputable. A simple white
muslin, that can come fresh from the laundry every week, is, in point of
real taste, worth any amount of spangled tissues. A plain straw bonnet,
with only a ribbon across it, is in reality in better taste than
rubbishy birds or butterflies, or tinsel ornaments.

"Finally, girls, don't dress at hap-hazard; for dress, so far from being
a matter of small consequence, is in reality one of the fine arts,--so
far from trivial, that each country ought to have