med
conflict with fierce men, it would be unreasonable to expect of them
any sacrifice to the Graces. But they are exposed to no such hardships.
They have a really very comfortable sort of life. They are not expected
to be useful. (I am writing all the time, of course, about the young
ladies in the affluent classes.) And it seems to me that they, in
payment of their debt to Fate, ought to occupy the time that is on
their hands by becoming ornamental, and increasing the world's store of
beauty. In a sense, certainly, they are ornamental. It is a strange
fact, and an ironic, that they spend quite five times the annual amount
that was spent by their grandmothers on personal adornment. If they can
afford it, well and good: let us have no sumptuary law. But plenty of
pretty dresses will not suffice. Pretty manners are needed with them,
and are prettier than they.

I had forgotten men. Every defect that I had noted in the modern young
woman is not less notable in the modern young man. Briefly, he is a
boor. If it is true that 'manners makyth man,' one doubts whether the
British race can be perpetuated. The young Englishman of to-day is
inferior to savages and to beasts of the field in that they are eager
to show themselves in an agreeable and seductive light to the females
of their kind, whilst he regards any such effort as beneath his
dignity. Not that he cultivates dignity in demeanour. He merely
slouches. Unlike his feminine counterpart, he lets his raiment match
his manners. Observe him any afternoon, as he passes down Piccadilly,
sullenly, with his shoulders humped, and his hat clapped to the back of
his head, and his cigarette dangling almost vertically from his lips.
It seems only appropriate that his hat is a billy-cock, and his shirt a
flannel one, and that his boots are brown ones. Thus attired, he is on
his way to pay a visit of ceremony to some house at which he has
recently dined. No; that is the sort of visit he never pays. (I must
confess I don't myself.) But one remembers the time when no
self-respecting youth would have shown himself in Piccadilly without
the vesture appropriate to that august highway. Nowadays there is no
care for appearances. Comfort is the one aim. Any care for appearances
is regarded rather as a sign of effeminacy. Yet never, in any other age
of the world's history, has it been regarded so. Indeed, elaborate
dressing used to be deemed by philosophers an outcome of the
sex-instinct. It wa