The habits of society make the dress of a fashionable woman far more expensive than that of a man of fashion.  Formerly it was not so; and, so long as it was not so, the extravagance of men in this respect quite equalled that of women.  It now takes other forms, but the habit is the same.  The waiters at any fashionable restaurant will tell you that what is a cheap dinner for a man would be a dear dinner for a woman.  Yet after all, the test is not in any particular class of expenditures, but in the business-like habit.  Men are of course more business-like in large combinations, for they are more used to them; but for the small details of daily economy women are more watchful.  The cases where women ruin their husbands by extravagance are exceptional.  As a rule, the men are the bread-winners; but the careful saving and managing and contriving come from the women.

GREATER INCLUDES LESS

I was once at a little musical party in New York, where several accomplished amateur singers were present, and with them the eminent professional, Miss Adelaide Phillipps.  The amateurs were first called on.  Each chose some difficult operatic passage, and sang her best.  When it came to the great opera-singer’s turn, instead of exhibiting her ability to eclipse those rivals on her own ground, she simply seated herself at the piano, and sang “Kathleen Mavourneen” with such thrilling sweetness that the young Irish girl who was setting the supper-table in the next room forgot all her plates and teaspoons, threw herself into a chair, put her apron over her face, and sobbed as if her heart would break.  All the training of Adelaide Phillipps—­her magnificent voice, her stage experience, her skill in effects, her power of expression—­went into the performance of that simple song.  The greater included the less.  And thus all the intellectual and practical training that any woman can have, all her public action and her active career, will make her, if she be a true woman, more admirable as a wife, a mother, and a friend.  The greater includes the less for her also.

Of course this is a statement of general facts and tendencies.  There must be among women, as among men, an endless variety of individual temperaments.  There will always be plenty whose career will illustrate the infirmities of genius, and whom no training can convince that two and two make four.  But the general fact is sure.  As no sensible man would seriously prefer for a wife a Hindoo or Tahitian woman rather than one bred in England or America, so every further advantage of education or opportunity will only improve, not impair, the true womanly type.