detached attitude of parents than with the lassies themselves, who are encouraged to shirk both cares and responsibilities and pass days and evenings in idleness.

An English or a French girl of position is born into a circle of duties and labor from which there is no escape. She learns early that 'SHE JOINS SOME ART SCHOOL." many people are dependent on her or look up to her as their model. The poor in the neighborhood fall to her lot; it is she who aids her mother in the finances of the house, or when food and linen are being sent to cottages where there are new arrivals. Invalid old women have to be visited; the rector calls on her to furnish music for his village club or help entertain his working-girls of a Saturday night. The fact that life is not and cannot possibly be all holiday is early impressed upon foreign women. The work that lies ready to their hands is a matter of tradition, and can no more be shirked by such maidens than a presentation at court or a first communion. They are integral parts of life.

Few girls on our side of the Atlantic have experiences of this kind. To the majority. country life means a hotel or a cottage hired for the summer months, which carries no responsibilities with it.

There is a temporary side to our social institutions, a constant moving on, which proves a power fully dissolvent. The knowledge that next year her family will be living somewhere else or wandering homeless in foreign lands, "because housekeeping fatigues poor mama," naturally detaches the daughter from any plan she may have formed for study or works of charity.

A more powerful factor, however, is the curious habit parents have of so arranging household machinery that their daughters shall be freed from its wheels. It is perhaps a laudable ambition to try to give one's offspring as much enjoyment as possible, but it leads to unexpected results when carried too far.

The average New York miss to-day is little better than a "parlor boarder" in her home, than which it is difficult to imagine a posi- . tion more detached. From the time she wakes in the morning until retiring for the night she takes no part in household matters. To get through the morning she joins some art school, or attends a reading-club, where she lunches if possible, or else wanders home for that meal late, and disturbs the routine of the kitchen.

After a hasty bite, my lady accomplishes a "quick change," and is out of the house again for the rest of the afternoon. Calls, receptions, or aimless trapesing, it does n't matter what,-fill her hours, the great point being not to get home until dinner-time. If there is nothing "on" for the evening she passes it over a novel, as undisturbed by any convulsions that may be in progress belowstairs as the most self-respecting "star boarder."

You may smile, dear reader, and put this down as a deliberate exaggeration, but if you take the trouble to look into the matter, you will find that homes where daughters strum the piano while mama cooks the dinner are distressingly numerous.

An insidious little circular has of late been calling the attention of New-Yorkers to certain down-town parlors where a man may keep evening clothes, extra top-coats, and other changes of apparel, avoiding in this way the annoyance of going home to dress. As the colliers of Killingsworth, who witnessed the first journeys of Stephenson's "traveling-engine," did not, in all probability,

REARRANGING THE GIRL'S FINE CLOTHES."

crowd

With a wardrobe judiciously distributed in different parts of the city and its suburbs, a demoiselle will be able to go through the successive transformations required by her day's amusement, jump from riding-habit to golf-skirt, into luncheon-, reception-, and ball-dress, without the tiresome necessity of reëntering the family circle. Think what saving of nerves and cab-fare will result! Two of New York's largest department stores already provide bathrooms where customers can take dips between a tussle at the bargain-counter and a quick lunch. The phrase, "All the comforts of home," will soon be as obsolete as the place itself, and returning there except to sleep will be eliminated from the list of a damsel's duties.

A subspecies of the genus parlor boarder existing among us, and among us alone, no other nation disputing our claim to this possession, isoh, hideous hideous phrase!-the

matinée girl, a type one shade less attractive than the tramp.

When of a Saturday afternoon the throngs of idle minxes come trooping, operaglass in hand, from the elevated stations, I feel as the Elector of Brandenburg must have done when, on his walks VOL. LXIII.-2.

An actor of my acquaintance, most unromantically in love with his wife, tells me that his theatrical life is made weary by girls of this category, who write to him, send him flowers, stand in groups at the stage entrance, or, eluding the janitor's vigilance, appear at his dressing-room door, in quest of autographs and compliments.

"It's a perfect shame!" I hear a fair reader exclaim as she turns these pages. "The writer seems to think that we are little better than dressed-up tramps, with nothing

in our heads but nonsense. He must have a very queer lot of girl friends if that is what he thinks of us. I've half a mind to write to the papers and prove how wrong he is and how unjust. It makes my blood boil when I think of it. Does n't he know that lots of girls are going in seriously for sports, out-ofdoor exercises, athletics, and other nice healthy things?"

Give me time, my dear. I was just going to speak about your athletic companions when you interrupted me. There are, as you say, quantities of girls who would disdain to wander all day about the streets, and who consider the time passed in shops as wasted. With your permission I will confide to you some observations recently made about this important and growing class.

Having had the honor, this autumn, to visit in a country house near New York at the same time as a golf champion, whose achievements on the links were thrilling the country, I learned many curious things about athletic damsels and their ways. The young lady in question arrived a week before the tournament that was to decide her supremacy, accompanied by her English trainer, a masseuse, and incidentally by her mama, a feeble-minded lady, so completely demoralized by her daughter's celebrity that she could talk of little else, and would confide, with little thrills of pride, to any one she could get to listen to her, how she could not take a ferryboat or trolley-car without being pointed out as the mother of the "champion."

"IT'S A PERFECT SHAME.

Nothing more curi

ous than the habits of the young athlete herself can be imagined. After a morning round of the links in company with the coach, she was handed over to her woman keeper, to be douched and rubbed and currycombed till luncheon-time. The afternoon was passed exercising in a gymnasium, fitted up in the billiard-room for her use. After her dinner, which, by the way, consisted principally of meat carefully weighed by mama in small scales, the girl was again rubbed and exercised before retiring. Hers was no idle life, you see.

As the great day drew near, envoys from the press appeared on the scene to sketch and snap-shot the celebrity in every pose. Sporty gents in loud clothes followed the morning play surreptitiously, in order that the betting centers might be kept informed as to her condition, and sent to the papers none too delicate accounts of her "form" and general appearance-familiarities it was impossible to prevent or resent, as the girl had for the moment become the property of the betting public, which was putting its money on her, and so expected

to be kept informed as to the chances of success.

The strain of the last twenty-four hours was dreadful on the whole household. We talked of little but the match and "odds." It was rather a shock, I confess, to discover that our fair Diana (on the verge of a breakdown) was being kept to her work by frequent libations of strong "tea," carried by mama in a flask for the purpose. All minor ills, however, were forgotten when at noon on the great day our sportswoman was brought home, collapsed, but victorious. We felt that glory had, indeed, been shed upon the house. Mama, on the thin edge of hysterics, where she had been staggering for a week, sobbed out that her only regret was that "Tom" had not lived to see the day; and that dear "Polly" had always been the joy and comfort of her life!

As all the papers published photos and biographical sketches of the winner, needlessly I add that her portrait adorned most of the railway-stations and hotel lobbies in the country, and that her pet name was on the lips of every stable-boy and bartender in the neighborhood, who may have won or lost their cash through her prowess.

Watching the champion during the week that followed the match, I could not, for the life of me, keep from thinking what a funny wife she would later make for the youth who