milkmaids.  They had no style, no figure.  Their shoulders were high, and their chests were flat, and they were one-sided, and they stooped,—­all of which would have been of no account, if they had only been unconsciously enjoying themselves; but they consciously were not.  It is possible that they thought they were happy, but I knew better.  You are never happy, unless you are master of the situation; and they were not.  They endeavored to appear at ease,—­a thing which people who are at ease never do.  They looked as if they had all their lives been meaning to go to Saratoga, and now they had got there and were determined not to betray any unwontedness.  It was not the timid, eager, delighted, fascinating, graceful awkwardness of a new young girl; it was not the careless, hearty, whole-souled enjoyment of an experienced girl; it was not the natural, indifferent, imperial queening it of an acknowledged monarch:  but something that caught hold of the hem of the garment of them all.  It was they with the sheen damped off.  So it was not imposing.  I could pick you up a dozen girls straight along, right out of the pantries and the butteries, right up from the washing-tubs and the sewing-machines, who should be abundantly able to “hoe their row” with them anywhere.  In short, I was extremely disappointed.  I expected to see the high fashion, the very birth and breeding, the cream cheese of the country, and it was skim-milk.  If that is birth, one can do quite as well without being born at all.  Occasionally you would see a girl with gentle blood in her veins, whether it were butcher-blood or banker-blood, but she only made the prevailing plebsiness more striking.  Now I maintain that a woman ought to be very handsome or very clever, or else she ought to go to work and do something.  Beauty is of itself a divine gift and adequate.  “Beauty is its own excuse for being” anywhere.  It ought not to be fenced in or monopolized, any more than a statue or a mountain.  It ought to be free and common, a benediction to all weary wayfarers.  It can never be profaned; for it veils itself from the unappreciative eye, and shines only upon its worshippers.  So a clever woman, whether she be a painter or a teacher or a dress-maker,—­if she really has an object in life, a career, she is safe.  She is a power.  She commands a realm.  She owns a world.  She is bringing things to bear.  Let her alone.  But it is a very dangerous and a very melancholy thing for common women to be “lying on their oars” long at a time.  Some of these were, I suppose, what Winthrop calls “business-women, fighting their way out of vulgarity into style.”  The process is rather uninteresting, but the result may be glorious.  Yet a good many of them were good, honest, kind, common girls, only demoralized by long lying around in a waiting posture.  It had taken the fire and sparkle out of them.  They were not in a healthy state.  They were degraded, contracted, flaccid.  They did not hold themselves