artificial foreign usage, where social caste prevails, and
bear them with a heroism worthy of a worse cause. They indeed represent
these usages to be a burden almost intolerable, and yet they submit to
them with a grace and endurance all their own. Probably there is no
harder-worked person than a lady in the season, let us say in Washington,
where the etiquette of visiting is carried to a perfection that it does
not reach even in New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, and where woman's
effort to keep the social fabric together requires more expenditure of
intellect and of physical force than was needed to protect the capital in
its peril a quarter of a century ago. When this cruel war is over, the
monument to the women who perished in it will need to be higher than that
to the Father of his Country. Merely in the item of keeping an account of
the visits paid and due, a woman needs a bookkeeper. Only to know the
etiquette of how and when and to whom and in what order the visits are to
be paid is to be well educated in a matter that assumes the first
importance in her life. This is, however, only a detail of bookkeeping
and of memory; to pay and receive, or evade, these visits of ceremony is
a work which men can admire without the power to imitate; even on the
supposition that a woman has nothing else to do, it calls for our humble
gratitude and a recognition of the largeness of nature that can put aside
any duties to husband or children in devotion to the public welfare. The
futile round of society life while it lasts admits of no rival. It seems
as important as the affairs of the government. The Drawer is far from
saying that it is not. Perhaps no one can tell what confusion would fall
into all the political relations if the social relations of the capital
were not kept oiled by the system of exchange of fictitious courtesies
among the women; and it may be true that society at large--men are so
apt, when left alone, to relapse--would fall into barbarism if our
pasteboard conventions were neglected. All honor to the self-sacrifice of
woman!

What a beautiful civilization ours is, supposed to be growing in
intelligence and simplicity, and yet voluntarily taking upon itself this
artificial burden in an already overtaxed life! The angels in heaven must
admire and wonder. The cynic wants to know what is gained for any
rational being when a city-full of women undertake to make and receive
formal visits with persons whom for the mo