the income be counted by hundreds or thousands.

While these standards prevail and the female mind is fixed on this
subject with such dire intent, it is not astonishing that a weaker
sister is occasionally tempted beyond her powers of resistance.
Nor that each day a new case of a well-dressed woman thieving in a
shop reaches our ears. The poor feeble-minded creature is not to
blame. She is but the reflexion of the minds around her and is
probably like the lady Emerson tells of, who confessed to him "that
the sense of being perfectly well-dressed had given her a feeling
of inward tranquillity which religion was powerless to bestow."




CHAPTER 5 - On Some Gilded Misalliances


A DEAR old American lady, who lived the greater part of her life in
Rome, and received every body worth knowing in her spacious
drawing-rooms, far up in the dim vastnesses of a Roman palace, used
to say that she had only known one really happy marriage made by an
American girl abroad.

In those days, being young and innocent, I considered that remark
cynical, and in my heart thought nothing could be more romantic and
charming than for a fair compatriot to assume an historic title and
retire to her husband's estates, and rule smilingly over him and a
devoted tenantry, as in the last act of a comic opera, when a rose-
colored light is burning and the orchestra plays the last brilliant