hardships. They have a really very comfortable sort of life. They are
not expected to be useful. (I am writing all the time, of course,
about the young ladies in the affluent classes.) And it seems to me
that they, in payment of their debt to Fate, ought to occupy the time
that is on their hands by becoming ornamental, and increasing the
world's store of beauty. In a sense, certainly, they are ornamental.
It is a strange fact, and an ironic, that they spend quite five times
the annual amount that was spent by their grandmothers on personal
adornment. If they can afford it, well and good: let us have no
sumptuary law. But plenty of pretty dresses will not suffice. Pretty
manners are needed with them, and are prettier than they.

I had forgotten men. Every defect that I had noted in the modern young
woman is not less notable in the modern young man. Briefly, he is a
boor. If it is true that `manners makyth man,' one doubts whether the
British race can be perpetuated. The young Englishman of to-day is
inferior to savages and to beasts of the field in that they are eager
to show themselves in an agreeable and seductive light to the females
of their kind, whilst he regards any such effort as beneath his
dignity. Not that he cultivates dignity in demeanour. He merely
slouches. Unlike his feminine counterpart, he lets his raiment match
his manners. Observe him any afternoon, as he passes down Piccadilly,
sullenly, with his shoulders humped, and his hat clapped to the back
of his head, and his cigarette dangling almost vertically from his
lips. It seems only appropriate that his hat is a billy-cock, and his
shirt a flannel one, and that his boots are brown ones. Thus attired,
he is on his way to pay a visit of ceremony to some house at which he
has recently dined. No; that is the sort of visit he never pays. (I
must confess I don't myself.) But one remembers the time when no self-
respecting youth would have shown himself in Piccadilly without the