speech they commonly excel men, and usually they have more of that vivacious dramatic power which is called “setting out a thing to the life.”  With all these advantages, and all the world open to them in newspapers and in books, they ought to be the leaders and stimulators of the best conversation.  With them it should never drop down to the too-common flatness and banality.  Women have made this world one of the most beautiful places of residence to be conceived.  They might make it one of the most interesting.

THE TALL GIRL

It is the fashion for girls to be tall.  This is much more than saying that tall girls are the fashion.  It means not only that the tall girl has come in, but that girls are tall, and are becoming tall, because it is the fashion, and because there is a demand for that sort of girl.  There is no hint of stoutness, indeed the willowy pattern is preferred, but neither is leanness suggested; the women of the period have got hold of the poet’s idea, “tall and most divinely fair,” and are living up to it.  Perhaps this change in fashion is more noticeable in England and on the Continent than in America, but that may be because there is less room for change in America, our girls being always of an aspiring turn.  Very marked the phenomenon is in England; on the street, at any concert or reception, the number of tall girls is so large as to occasion remark, especially among the young girls just coming into the conspicuousness of womanhood.  The tendency of the new generation is towards unusual height and gracious slimness.  The situation would be embarrassing to thousands of men who have been too busy to think about growing upward, were it not for the fact that the tall girl, who must be looked up to, is almost invariably benignant, and bears her height with a sweet timidity that disarms fear.  Besides, the tall girl has now come on in such force that confidence is infused into the growing army, and there is a sense of support in this survival of the tallest that is very encouraging to the young.

Many theories have been put forward to account for this phenomenon.  It is known that delicate plants in dark places struggle up towards the light in a frail slenderness, and it is said that in England, which seems to have increasing cloudiness, and in the capital more and more months of deeper darkness and blackness, it is natural that the British girl should grow towards the light.  But this is a fanciful view of the case, for it cannot be proved that English men have proportionally increased their stature.  The English man has always seemed big to the Continental peoples, partly because objects generally take on gigantic dimensions when seen through a fog.  Another theory, which has much more to commend it, is that the increased height of women is due to the aesthetic movement, which has now spent its force, but has left certain results, especially in the change of the taste in colors.  The woman