As to the silly girls and women who go shopping "for fun," and to make eyes, and chatter with clerks, there is no question how their preferences go on this question. We don't count their votes.
For myself, as my time is always limited, I desire despatch, first and foremost, with an exactness involving no postscript to my shopping; and I would also prefer female clerks, if I could include this. In fact I am willing, in any case, to give my vote for the female clerks, so much do I desire that my own sex should be helped to help themselves.
Fashionable Disease.—The day when it was considered interesting and lady-like to be always ailing has gone by. Good health, fortunately, is the fashion. A rosy cheek is no longer considered "vulgar," and a fair, shapely allowance of flesh on the bones is considered the "style." Perhaps the great secret that good looks cannot exist without good health, may have had something to do with the care now taken to obtain it; whether this be so or not, future generations are the gainers all the same. A languid eye and a waxy, bloodless complexion, may go begging now for admiration. The "elegant stoop" in the shoulders, formerly considered so aristocratic, has also miraculously disappeared. Women walk more and ride less; they have rainy-day suits of apparel, too, which superfluity never was known to exist aforetime, sunshine being the only atmosphere in which the human butterfly was supposed to float. In short, "the fragile women of America" will soon exist only in the acid journal of some English traveller, who will, of course, stick to the by-gone fact as a still present reality, with a dogged pertinacity known only to that amiable nation.
UNKNOWN ACQUAINTANCES.
You have none? Then I am sorry for you. Much of my pleasure in my daily walks is due to them. Perhaps you go over the ground mechanically, with only dinner or business in your eye when you shall reach your journey's end. Perhaps you "don't see a soul," as you express it. Perhaps you have no "soul" yourself; only a body, of which you are very conscious, and whose claims upon you outweigh every other consideration. That is a pity. I wouldn't go round that treadmill for all the mines of Golconda. It always makes me think of that melancholy old horse one sees, pawing rotatory wood, at the way stations, on the railroad tracks; and because the sight makes every bone in me ache, my particular window-seat in the car is always sure to command a view of him. Now, come what will, I'll not be that horse. You may if you like, and I will cling to my dreams. I sha'n't live in this world forever, and I won't hurry over the ground and never see a sweet face as it flits past me, or a grand one, or a sorrowful one. I won't be deaf to the rippling laugh of a little child or the musical voice of a refined woman. It may be only two words that she shall speak, but they shall have a pleasant significance for me. Then there are strange faces I meet every day which I hope to keep on meeting till I die. Who was such an idiot as to say that "no woman ever sees beauty in another"? I meet every day a face that no man living could admire more than myself; soulful as well as beautiful. Lovely blue, pensive eyes; golden hair, waving over a pure white forehead; cheeks like the heart of a "blush rose;" and a grieved little rosy mouth, like that of a baby to whom for the first time you deny something, fearing lest it grow too wilful. I think that day lost in which I do not meet that sweet face, framed in its close mourning bonnet. Were I a man it is to that face I should immediately "make love."
Make love? Alas! I did not think how terribly significant was this modern term when I used it. Let no man make love to that face. But if there is one who can be in dead earnest, and stay so, I give my consent, provided he will not attempt to change the expression of that mouth.