Now, there is a fair sample of that woman’s talk; it is a mystery to me how she keeps it up.  Mamma says that she is “wierdly picturesque;” papa says (but only to me) that she is “a regular downright fool.”  But they are both wrong; she is a woman with a sufficient amount of brains to know just how easily and successfully so-called sensible people may be imposed upon; and how readily they can be made use of—­stepping stones to the accomplishment of selfish desires.  But she does not fool mamma.  They both use one another to advantage.  There is always between them a tacit little arrangement.  Mrs. Babbington Brooks never stops short of a positive sensation.  Her methods are bold, startling, successful.  Her husband, an insignificant looking man, invented something, an air-brake for railway trains, an improvement on the Westinghouse air-brake, “Brooks’ Unbroken Circuit.”  This, after years of obscure struggling, brought them into immediate wealth, but not at once into social notice.  Their first efforts in that direction, or rather, her first efforts, were complete failures.  They nibbled about on the outer edge; finally, it dawned upon her to play some decided role.  She determined to be an aesthete.  She built a house accordingly; she dressed accordingly; and she acted, but above all, she talked accordingly.  Thanks to her wandering brother, an ideal American adventurer, she obtained from London, far ahead of the general importation, a complete outfit of Lilies, Languors, Yearnings, Reachings-out, Poppies, Wasted Passions, Platonics, Heart-throbs, and all the more lately approved instruments of aesthetic torture.  Her establishment was ready.  She wanted recognition.  She waited for an opportune moment.  It came.  Oscar Wilde, the apostle in chief of the aesthetic school, reached our shores.  He brought a letter of introduction “To the one aesthete in all America, Mrs. Babbington Brooks.”  On his arrival he sent her this letter, and with it a note, written in a full, round hand, stating that he would be at her service after his lecture in her town, on the eighteenth of the coming February, and, being it was she, his terms were only three hundred dollars; usual price, five hundred.  She wired an eager acceptance of his generous offer, and at once set her household in readiness.  She invited the town—­the fashionable, so-called desirable portion of it—­and waited the issue.  Her gilded net was well spread; her bait irresistible.  She easily caught them all, large and small; her house was crowded; her effort a recognized masterpiece.  Mamma says she could have readily made arrangements with Oscar Wilde for a season in London—­a female aesthete, and from the crude land of America!  Now, she is actually quite the rage!  Her triumph is now complete; her following large, composed of a batch of deluded fools, caught by the glamour and the blow of brazen trumpets, with just the tincture of an artistic principle.

A large amount of money was spent on my educational training, both at home and abroad.  A young woman who can play a little, sing in fairly good voice a few pretty songs, popular ballads, and paint an occasional plaque, or even rise to the dignity of a panel, can surely make claim to the free chromo distribution of that flattering term, “most highly accomplished.”