THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.

Our landlady’s daughter is a young lady of some pretensions to gentility.  She wears her bonnet well back on her head, which is known by all to be a mark of high breeding.  She wears her trains very long, as the great ladies do in Europe.  To be sure, their dresses are so made only to sweep the tapestried doors of chateaux and palaces; as those odious aristocrats of the other side do not go draggling through the mud in silks and satins, but, forsooth, must ride in coaches when they are in full dress.  It is true, that, considering various habits of the American people, also the little accidents which the best-kept sidewalks are liable to, a lady who has swept a mile of them is not exactly in such a condition that one would care to be her neighbor.  But then there is no need of being so hard on these slight weaknesses of the poor, dear women as our little deformed gentleman was the other day.

—­There are no such women as the Boston women, Sir,—­he said.  Forty-two degrees, north latitude, Rome, Sir, Boston, Sir!  They had grand women in old Rome, Sir,—­and the women bore such men-children as never the world saw before.  And so it was here, Sir.  I tell you, the revolution the Boston boys started had to run in woman’s milk before it ran in man’s blood, Sir!

But confound the make-believe women we have turned loose in our streets!—­where do they come from?  Not out of Boston parlors, I trust.  Why, there isn’t a beast or a bird that would drag its tail through the dirt in the way these creatures do their dresses.  Because a queen or a duchess wears long robes on great occasions, a maid-of-all-work or a factory-girl thinks she must make herself a nuisance by trailing through the street, picking up and carrying about with her—­pah! that’s what I call getting vulgarity into your bones and marrow.  Making believe be what you are not is the essence of vulgarity.  Show over dirt is the one attribute of vulgar people.  If any man can walk behind one of these women and see what she rakes up as she goes, and not feel squeamish, he has got a tough stomach.  I wouldn’t let one of ’em into my room without serving ’em as David served Saul at the cave in the wilderness,—­cut off his skirts, Sir! cut off his skirts!

I suggested, that I had seen some pretty stylish ladies who offended in the way he condemned.

Stylish women, I don’t doubt,—­said the little gentleman.—­Don’t tell me that a true lady ever sacrifices the duty of keeping all about her sweet and clean to the wish of making a vulgar show.  I won’t believe it of a lady.  There are some things that no fashion has any right to touch, and cleanliness is one of those things.  If a woman wishes to show that her husband or her father has got money, which she wants and means to spend, but doesn’t know how, let her buy