be "lying on their oars" long at a time. Some of these were, I
suppose, what Winthrop calls "business-women, fighting their way
out of vulgarity into style." The process is rather uninteresting,
but the result may be glorious. Yet a good many of them were good
honest, kind, common girls, only demoralized by long lying around
in a waiting posture. It had taken the fire and sparkle out of
them. They were not in a healthy state. They were degraded,
contracted, flaccid. They did not hold themselves high. They
knew that in a market-point of view there was a frightful glut
of women. The usually small ratio of men was unusually
diminished by the absence of those who gone to the war, and of
those who, as was currently reported, were ashamed that they
had not gone. A few available men had it all their own way;
the women were on the lookout for them, instead of being
themselves looked out for. They talked about "gentlemen," and
being "companionable to GEN-tlemen," and who was "fascinating
to GEN-tlemen," till the "grand old name became a nuisance.
There was an under-current of unsated coquetry. I don't
suppose they were any sillier than the rest of us; but when our
silliness is mixed in with housekeeping and sewing and teaching
and returning visits, it passes off harmless. When it is
stripped of all these modifiers, however, and goes off exposed
to Saratoga, and melts in with a hundred other sillinesses, it
makes a great show.

No, I don't like Saratoga. I don't think it is wholesome. No
place can be healthy that keeps up such an unmitigated dressing.

"Where do you walk?" I asked an artless little lady.