still be troubled with anxious cares for her spring and fall and summer and winter bonnets,—­all the variety will not take the place of them.  Gloves are bought by the dozen; and as to dresses, there seems to be no limit to the quantity of material and trimming that may be expended upon them.  When I was a young lady, seventy-five dollars a year was considered by careful parents a liberal allowance for a daughter’s wardrobe.  I had a hundred, and was reckoned rich; and I sometimes used a part to make up the deficiencies in the allowance of Sarah Evans, my particular friend, whose father gave her only fifty.  We all thought that a very scant pattern; yet she generally made a very pretty and genteel appearance, with the help of occasional presents from friends.”

“How could a girl dress for fifty dollars?” said Marianne.

“She could get a white muslin and a white cambric, which, with different sortings of ribbons, served her for all dress-occasions.  A silk, in those days, took only ten yards in the making, and one dark silk was considered a reasonable allowance to a lady’s wardrobe.  Once made, it stood for something,—­always worn carefully, it lasted for years.  One or two calico morning-dresses, and a merino for winter wear, completed the list.  Then, as to collars, capes, cuffs, etc., we all did our own embroidering, and very pretty things we wore, too.  Girls looked as pretty then as they do now, when four or five hundred dollars a year is insufficient to clothe them.”

“But, mamma, you know our allowance isn’t anything like that,—­it is quite a slender one, though not so small as yours was,” said Marianne.  “Don’t you think the customs of society make a difference?  Do you think, as things are, we could go back and dress for the sum you did?”

“You cannot,” said my wife, “without a greater sacrifice of feeling than I wish to impose on you.  Still, though I don’t see how to help it, I cannot but think that the requirements of fashion are becoming needlessly extravagant, particularly in regard to the dress of women.  It seems to me, it is making the support of families so burdensome that young men are discouraged from marriage.  A young man, in a moderately good business, might cheerfully undertake the world with a wife who could make herself pretty and attractive for seventy-five dollars a year, when he might sigh in vain for one who positively could not get through, and be decent, on four hundred.  Women, too, are getting to be so attached to the trappings and accessories of life, that they cannot think of marriage without an amount of fortune which few young men possess.”

“You are talking in very low numbers about the dress of women,” said Miss Featherstone.  “I do assure you that it is the easiest thing in the world for a girl to make away with a thousand dollars a year, and not have so much to show for it either as Marianne and Jennie.”

“To be sure,” said I.  “Only establish certain formulas of expectation, and it is the easiest thing in the world.  For instance, in your mother’s day girls talked of a pair of gloves,—­now they talk of a pack; then it was a bonnet summer and winter,—­now it is a bonnet spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and hats like monthly roses,—­a new blossom every few weeks.”