thing to be told that such and such an evening blouse or bodice copied ‘from the Paris model’ will cost Forty Guineas--“We _might_ possibly do it for Thirty Five,”--says the costumier meditatively, studying with well-assumed gravity the small, flimsy object he is thus pricing, a trifle made up of chiffon, ribbon, and tinsel gew-gaws, knowing all the while that everything of which it is composed could be purchased for much less than ten pounds. Twenty-five guineas, forty-five guineas, sixty-five guineas are quite common prices for gowns at any of the fashionable shops to-day. One cannot, of course, blame the modistes and outfitting firms for asking these absurd fancy prices if they can get them. If women are mad, it is perhaps wise, just, and reasonable to take financial advantage of their madness while it lasts. Certainly no woman of well-balanced brain would give unlimited prices for gowns without most careful inquiry as to the correct value of the material and trimming used for them,--and the feminine creature who runs into the elaborate show-rooms of Madame Zoë or Berenice, or Faustina, and orders frocks by the dozen, saying chirpingly: “Oh, yes! _You_ know how they ought to be made! Your taste is always perfect! Make them _very_ pretty, won’t you?--_much_ prettier than those you made for Lady Claribel! Yes!--thanks! I’ll leave it all in your hands!” this woman, I say, is a mere lunatic, gibbering nonsense, who could not, if she were asked, tell where twice two making four might possibly lead her in the sum-total of a banking account.