Personally, I range myself on the grandmother's side. I take my stand
shoulder to shoulder with the Graces. On the banner that I wave is
embroidered a device of prunes and prisms.

I am no blind fanatic, however. I admit that artlessness is a charming
idea. I admit that it is sometimes charming as a reality. I applaud it
(all the more heartily because it is rare) in children. But then,
children, like the young of all animals whatsoever, have a natural
grace. As a rule, they begin to show it in their third year, and to
lose it in their ninth. Within that span of six years they can be
charming without intention; and their so frequent failure in charm is
due to their voluntary or enforced imitation of the ways of their
elders. In Georgian and Early Victorian days the imitation was always
enforced. Grown-up people had good manners, and wished to see them
reflected in the young. Nowadays, the imitation is always voluntary.
Grown-up people have no manners at all; whereas they certainly have a
very keen taste for the intrinsic charm of children. They wish
children to be perfectly natural. That is (aesthetically at least) an
admirable wish. My complaint against these grown-up people is, that
they themselves, whom time has robbed 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