ke the best
of them. We can always lighten somebody's burden." I believe she is
wrong in saying things are not for the best, but there could be no more
sublime resolution than to determine to do all we can to make wrong
right.

XIV.

A QUESTION OF SOCIETY.

I cannot say how it is in other places, but every one who knows much of
society girls in Boston must have been struck with a certain earnest
note which sounds through all their frivolity. Few of them are satisfied
to be simply society girls. They wish to identify themselves with some
charity, or to make a thorough study of some art or science. It may be
due to their Puritan ancestry, forbidding them to make pleasure the only
business of life.

Many of them seem to be always on the eve of revolt and ready to give up
society altogether. They join a Protestant sisterhood or even become
Roman Catholics, or they enter a training-school for nurses. I heard
only the other day of one of the loveliest "buds" of this season who has
already decided that a society life is an unsatisfactory one, and who is
almost prepared to go as a missionary to India.

A young girl told me not long ago that she was wretched at the thought
she must soon leave school, for she dreaded the society life from which
there seemed no escape. She wished to find some charitable work
instantly which would be on the face of it so absorbing that it would be
a complete excuse for her to refuse all invitations. She is only one
among many who have the same feeling.

It is hard to know what to say to such a girl. Motives are so mixed that
it is hard to stimulate the growth of the wheat without stimulating that
of the tares also. Most serious women would regret to see any young
friend become a mere society girl, but how far it is best for a girl to
give up society it is not easy to say.

Circumstances make different duties. The pathway of some girls lies
directly through society. At the suitable age their sisters, their
mothers, and even their grandmothers have formally "come out," and have
at once been overwhelmed with invitations to the best houses in the
city. If such a girl has it in her mind to rebel against precedents she
would do well to consider carefully what Holmes has said in another
connection: "There are those who step out of the ordinary ranks by
reason of strength; there are others who fall out by reason of
weakness." For instance, a girl is painfully conscious of her plainness.
H