bed of their natural grace as surely as it
robs the other animals, are content to be perfectly natural. This
contentment I deplore, and am keen to disturb.

I except from my indictment any young lady who may read these words. I
will assume that she differs from the rest of the human race, and has
not, never had, anything to learn in the art of conversing prettily, of
entering or leaving a room or a vehicle gracefully, of writing
appropriate letters, et patati et patata. I will assume that all these
accomplishments came naturally to her. She will now be in a mood to
accept my proposition that of her contemporaries none seems to have
been so lucky as herself. She will agree with me that other girls need
training. She will not deny that grace in the little affairs of life is
a thing which has to be learned. Some girls have a far greater aptitude
for learning it than others; but, with one exception, no girls have it
in them from the outset. It is a not less complicated thing than is the
art of acting, or of nursing the sick, and needs for the acquirement of
it a not less laborious preparation.

Is it worth the trouble? Certainly the trouble is not taken. The
'finishing school,' wherein young ladies were taught to be graceful, is
a thing of the past. It must have been a dismal place; but the
dismalness of it--the strain of it--was the measure of its
indispensability. There I beg the question. Is grace itself
indispensable? Certainly, it has been dispensed with. It isn't reckoned
with. To sit perfectly mute 'in company,' or to chatter on at the top
of one's voice; to shriek with laughter; to fling oneself into a room
and dash oneself out of it; to collapse on chairs or sofas; to sprawl
across tables; to slam doors; to write, without punctuation, notes that
only an expert in handwriting could read, and only an expert in
mis-spelling could understand; to hustle, to bounce, to go straight
ahead--to be, let us say, perfectly natural in the midst of an
artificial civilisation, is an ideal which the young ladies of to-day
are neither publicly nor privately discouraged from cherishing. The
word 'cherishing' implies a softness of which they are not guilty. I
hasten to substitute 'pursuing.' If these young ladies were not in the
aforesaid midst of an artificial civilisation, I should be the last to
discourage their pursuit. If they were Amazons, for example, spending
their lives beneath the sky, in tilth of stubborn fields, and in ar