to be important, health is indispensable, and beauty of face and form are desirable; knowledge is priceless, and unselfish amiability is above the price of rubies; but how shall we set a value, so far as the pleasure of living is concerned, upon the power to be interesting?  We hear a good deal about the highly educated young woman with reverence, about the emancipated young woman with fear and trembling, but what can take the place of the interesting woman?  Anxiety is this moment agitating the minds of tens of thousands of mothers about the education of their daughters.  Suppose their education should be directed to the purpose of making them interesting women, what a fascinating country this would be about the year 1900.

GIVE THE MEN A CHANCE

Give the men a chance.  Upon the young women of America lies a great responsibility.  The next generation will be pretty much what they choose to make it; and what are they doing for the elevation of young men?  It is true that there are the colleges for men, which still perform a good work—­though some of them run a good deal more to a top-dressing of accomplishments than to a sub-soiling of discipline—­but these colleges reach comparatively few.  There remain the great mass who are devoted to business and pleasure, and only get such intellectual cultivation as society gives them or they chance to pick up in current publications.  The young women are the leisure class, consequently—­so we hear—­the cultivated class.  Taking a certain large proportion of our society, the women in it toil not, neither do they spin; they do little or no domestic work; they engage in no productive occupation.  They are set apart for a high and ennobling service—­the cultivation of the mind and the rescue of society from materialism.  They are the influence that keeps life elevated and sweet—­are they not?  For what other purpose are they set apart in elegant leisure?  And nobly do they climb up to the duties of their position.  They associate together in esoteric, intellectual societies.  Every one is a part of many clubs, the object of which is knowledge and the broadening of the intellectual horizon.  Science, languages, literature, are their daily food.  They can speak in tongues; they can talk about the solar spectrum; they can interpret Chaucer, criticise Shakespeare, understand Browning.  There is no literature, ancient or modern, that they do not dig up by the roots and turn over, no history that they do not drag before the club for final judgment.  In every little village there is this intellectual stir and excitement; why, even in New York, readings interfere with the german;—­[’Dances’, likely referring to the productions of the Straus family in Vienna.  D.W.]—­and Boston!  Boston is no longer divided into wards, but into Browning “sections.”