been so lucky as herself. She will agree with me that other girls need
training. She will not deny that grace in the little affairs of life
is a thing which has to be learned. Some girls have a far greater
aptitude for learning it than others; but, with one exception, no
girls have it in them from the outset. It is a not less complicated
thing than is the art of acting, or of nursing the sick, and needs for
the acquirement of it a not less laborious preparation.

Is it worth the trouble? Certainly the trouble is not taken. The
`finishing school,' wherein young ladies were taught to be graceful,
is a thing of the past. It must have been a dismal place; but the
dismalness of it--the strain of it--was the measure of its
indispensability. There I beg the question. Is grace itself
indispensable? Certainly, it has been dispensed with. It isn't
reckoned with. To sit perfectly mute `in company,' or to chatter on at
the top of one's voice; to shriek with laughter; to fling oneself into
a room and dash oneself out of it; to collapse on chairs or sofas; to
sprawl across tables; to slam doors; to write, without punctuation,
notes that only an expert in handwriting could read, and only an
expert in mis-spelling could understand; to hustle, to bounce, to go
straight ahead--to be, let us say, perfectly natural in the midst of
an artificial civilisation, is an ideal which the young ladies of to-
day are neither publicly nor privately discouraged from cherishing.
The word `cherishing' implies a softness of which they are not guilty.
I hasten to substitute `pursuing.' If these young ladies were not in
the aforesaid midst of an artificial civilisation, I should be the
last to discourage their pursuit. If they were Amazons, for example,
spending their lives beneath the sky, in tilth of stubborn fields, and
in armed conflict with fierce men, it would be unreasonable to expect
of them any sacrifice to the Graces. But they are exposed to no such