introducer of good Periodicals." I am superficial, but she is not. She
reads each good book itself, not the criticism only. She reads it
carefully, thoroughly, as few other people ever do. Then she gives me a
special line of thought to follow, and I am made to go through a little
combination of what I have read and of that which she has told me in her
direct, compact manner. Thus does she enable me to produce a written
paper which never fails to start the "Culture-Seeking Club" into a
little flutter of supposed intellectual excitement. For a moment, at
least, I am forgotten, or, if remembered at all, they say to one another
as they sip that everlasting pale pink foam out of the "dainty art gems
from Venice, you know:" "Ah, Sophia Gilder is her more clever mamma's
own daughter; but, alas! she will never be such a woman as her
mother--the gifted Mrs. John Robert Gilder, the life and soul of our
Culture-Seeking Club!" And I piously hope to heaven that I may be saved
from such a fate, and never be the woman that I know mamma to be!

My last effort was said to be a wild, jagged thing--a reaching out, a
groping after. It was called "Souls Antagonistic: A Symphony." I wore an
especial costume--"suited to the subject," said mamma. "A sweet poem of
a gown," echoed Mrs. Babbington Brooks. When I finished my task, for it
was a task, and imposed by a hard task-master, Mrs. Brooks glided, like
the serpent she is, over to my seat and looked down with a false longing
into my flushed face. Then in a low, somewhat musical voice, full of a
false tenderness and a borrowed pathos, "May I, sweet young girl, touch
with mine the precious lips which to-night have made exceeding glad my
sad, sad soul with those wise and honeyed words?" She kissed me. I
fairly trembled with an intense loathing. That oily-tongued creature
hates me with a deadly hatred. And she fears me, for she knows that I
have found her out and know her to be what she is, a most _successful
fashionable fraud_. But it is folly to run counter to the social