Worldly Ways and Byways | Page 9

present, when a girl comes out, her
mother presents her to everybody she will be likely to know if she were
to live a century. In the seventies, ladies cheerfully shared their
state-rooms with women they did not know, and often became friends
in consequence; but now, unless a certain deck-suite can be secured,
with bath and sitting-room, on one or two particular "steamers," the
great lady is in despair. Yet our mothers were quite as refined as the
present generation, only they took life simply, as they found it.
Children are now taken abroad so young, that before they have reached
an age to appreciate what they see, Europe has become to them a
twice-told tale. So true is this, that a receipt for making children good
Americans is to bring them up abroad. Once they get back here it is
hard to entice them away again.
With each improvement in the speed of our steamers, something of the
glamour of Europe vanishes. The crowds that yearly rush across see
and appreciate less in a lifetime than our parents did in their one tour
abroad. A good lady of my acquaintance was complaining recently how
much Paris bored her.
"What can you do to pass the time?" she asked. I innocently answered
that I knew nothing so entrancing as long mornings passed at the
Louvre.
"Oh, yes, I do that too," she replied, "but I like the 'Bon Marche' best!"
A trip abroad has become a purely social function to a large number of

wealthy Americans, including "presentation" in London and a winter in
Rome or Cairo. And just as a "smart" Englishman is sure to tell you
that he has never visited the "Tower," it has become good form to
ignore the sight-seeing side of Europe; hundreds of New Yorkers never
seeing anything of Paris beyond the Rue de la Paix and the Bois. They
would as soon think of going to Cluny or St. Denis as of visiting the
museum in our park!
Such people go to Fontainebleau because they are buying furniture, and
they wish to see the best models. They go to Versailles on the coach
and "do" the Palace during the half-hour before luncheon. Beyond that,
enthusiasm rarely carries them. As soon as they have settled themselves
at the Bristol or the Rhin begins the endless treadmill of leaving cards
on all the people just seen at home, and whom they will meet again in a
couple of months at Newport or Bar Harbor. This duty and the
all-entrancing occupation of getting clothes fills up every spare hour.
Indeed, clothes seem to pervade the air of Paris in May, the
conversation rarely deviating from them. If you meet a lady you know
looking ill, and ask the cause, it generally turns out to be "four hours a
day standing to be fitted." Incredible as it may seem, I have been told of
one plain maiden lady, who makes a trip across, spring and autumn,
with the sole object of getting her two yearly outfits.
Remembering the hundreds of cultivated people whose dream in life
(often unrealized from lack of means) has been to go abroad and visit
the scenes their reading has made familiar, and knowing what such a
trip would mean to them, and how it would be looked back upon during
the rest of an obscure life, I felt it almost a duty to "suppress" a wealthy
female (doubtless an American cousin of Lady Midas) when she
informed me, the other day, that decidedly she would not go abroad this
spring.
"It is not necessary. Worth has my measures!"
CHAPTER 4
- The Outer and the Inner Woman

IT is a sad commentary on our boasted civilization that cases of
shoplifting occur more and more frequently each year, in which the
delinquents are women of education and refinement, or at least belong
to families and occupy positions in which one would expect to find
those qualities! The reason, however, is not difficult to discover.
In the wake of our hasty and immature prosperity has come (as it does
to all suddenly enriched societies) a love of ostentation, a desire to
dazzle the crowd by displays of luxury and rich trappings indicative of
crude and vulgar standards. The newly acquired money, instead of
being expended for solid comforts or articles which would afford
lasting satisfaction, is lavished on what can be worn in public, or the
outer shell of display, while the home table and fireside belongings are
neglected. A glance around our theatres, or at the men and women in
our crowded thoroughfares, is sufficient to reveal to even a casual
observer that the mania for fine clothes and what is costly, PER SE, has
become the besetting sin of our day and our