“Oh now, Mr. Crowfield, you frighten me,” said Humming-Bird. “I’m so afraid, do you know, that I am doing exactly that.”
“And so am I,” said Pheasant; “and yet, certainly, it is not what I mean or intend to do.”
“But how to help it,” said Dove.
“My dears,” said I, “where there is a will there is a way. Only resolve that you will put the true beauty first,—that, even if you do have to seem unfashionable, you will follow the highest beauty of womanhood,—and the battle is half gained. Only resolve that your time, your strength, your money, such as you have, shall not all—nor more than half—be given to mere outward adornment, and you will go right. It requires only an army of girls animated with this noble purpose to declare independence in America, and emancipate us from the decrees and tyrannies of French actresses and ballet-dancers. En avant, girls! You yet can, if you will, save the republic.”
X
WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS
The conversation on dress which I had held with Jenny and her little covey of Birds of Paradise appeared to have worked in the minds of the fair council, for it was not long before they invaded my study again in a body. They were going out to a party, but called for Jenny, and of course gave me and Mrs. Crowfield the privilege of seeing them equipped for conquest.
Latterly, I must confess, the mysteries of the toilet rites have impressed me with a kind of superstitious awe. Only a year ago my daughter Jenny had smooth dark hair, which she wreathed in various soft, flowing lines about her face, and confined in a classical knot on the back of her head. Jenny had rather a talent for coiffure, and the arrangement of her hair was one of my little artistic delights. She always had something there,—a leaf, a spray, a bud or blossom, that looked fresh, and had a sort of poetical grace of its own.