men,' as another stock phrase goes. I may be mistaken, and I'll never
have a chance now to find out whether I am or not, but I believe if I had
a daughter like that, it would be my earnest wish to bring her up in some
quiet country place where she could dress simply, and spend much time
outdoors, and not see too many people until she was nineteen or twenty.
But the mother I have been talking about didn't feel that way. She
taught her daughter to make the most of her looks--her eyes and her
mouth, and her figure; she showed her how to arrange her dress in a way
which should seem simple--and really be alluring; she drilled her in the
art of being flippant without being pert, of appearing gentle when she
was only sly, of saying the right thing at the right time, and--what is
much more important--keeping still at the right time. The pupil was
docile because she was eager to learn and she was clever. She made very
few mistakes, and she never made the same one twice.

"Of course, all this education had one aim and end--a rich husband. 'I
hope I've brought you up too sensibly,' the mother used to say, 'for you
to even think of throwing yourself away on the first attractive boy that
proposes to you. Your type is just the kind to appeal to some big, heavy,
oversated millionaire. Keep your eyes open for him.' The daughter was as
obedient in listening to this counsel as she had been in regard to the
others, for it fell in exactly with her own wishes; she was tired of
being poor, of scrimping and saving and 'keeping up appearances.' The
innumerable young bank clerks and journalists and teachers and college
students who fluttered about her burnt their moth-wings to no avail. But
that _rara avis_, a really rich man, found her very kind to him.

"Well, you can guess the result. When she was not quite eighteen, a man
who was beyond question a millionaire proposed to her, and she accepted
him. He was nearly twenty years older than she was, and was certainly