sentimental sympathy is lavished year by year, their heart-whole
superciliousness to the poor shopper, especially if she chance to
be a housewife striving nervously to make a few dollars cover her
family needs, is wantonly and detestably unkind. It is not with us
as it was in the England of Lamb's day, and the quality of breeding
is shown in a well-practised restraint rather than in a sweet and
somewhat lofty consideration.

Eliminating all the more obvious features of criticism, as throwing
no light upon the subject, we come to the consideration of three
points,--the domestic, the official, and the social manners of a
nation which has been roundly accused of degenerating from the high
standard of former years, of those gracious and beautiful years which
few of us have the good fortune to remember. On the first count, I
believe that a candid and careful observation will result in a
verdict of acquittal. Foreigners, Englishmen and Englishwomen
especially, who visit our shores, are impressed with the politeness
of Americans in their own households. That fine old Saxon point of
view, "What is the good of a family, if one cannot be disagreeable
in the bosom of it?" has been modified by the simple circumstance
that the family bosom is no longer a fixed and permanent asylum. The
disintegration of the home may be a lamentable feature of modern
life; but since it has dawned upon our minds that adult members of
a family need not necessarily live together if they prefer to live
apart, the strain of domesticity has been reduced to the limits of
endurance. We have gained in serenity what we have lost in
self-discipline by this easy achievement of an independence which,
fifty years ago, would have been deemed pure licence. I can remember
that, when I was a little girl, two of our neighbours, a widowed
mother and a widowed daughter, scandalized all their friends by