“Well, Muriel, you are the most astonishing Bostonienne I know,” said Emily, laughing. “I should just like to analyze your mélange. Let’s see now. In the first place, you defy fashion, and insist on wearing dresses that show your shape, when all the rest of us are swaddled in half a dozen starched petticoats, and are pining in secret for the hoops of our grandmothers to come into vogue again. You”— “How many have you on, honey-bird? Come, ‘’fess,’ as Topsy says,” demanded Muriel, mischievously. “I? Oh, I’m moderate,” returned Emily. “I only wear six.” Muriel put up her hands, orbed her mouth, and opened her large eyes in mock horror. “Goodness me!” said Emily, laughing and smoothing her bounteous skirts, “Six is nothing. Why everybody wears seven. Eight and nine are not uncommon. And there’s Bertha Appleby wears twelve.” Muriel burst into low, silver laughter, in which she was joined by her friend. “To resume,” continued Emily when the mirth had subsided, “you won’t wear low-necked dresses at parties. You don’t waltz. You don’t flirt. You don’t care to be admired. You don’t run after the lions. You pay court to all the taboo people, visit those who are voted out of good society, ask them to visit you”— “And cry ‘à bas la Madame Grundy,’” put in Muriel, with a free and frolic toss of her arm. “Yes, and cry, ‘down with Mrs. Grundy,’” continued Emily. “Then you cultivate the most miscellaneous and outlandish set of characters—authors and actors, and actresses, and reformers, and clergymen, and musicians and comeouters and people respectable and disrespectable all meet here, higgledy-piggledy, in the most heterogeneous mixture—the most chaotic”— “O no, Emily dear, not chaotic,” interposed Muriel, “not chaotic but cosmic. I accept them all as Nature accepts them all. Down with the walls! That’s my principle. No castes—no factitious distinctions. Let fine people of all sorts come together and learn to know each other. Democracy forever!” “Yes, indeed—but doesn’t good society get horrified at your doings!” laughingly exclaimed Emily “Doesn’t the whole neighborhood hold up its hands at you? Why, your aristocratic acquaintance look at you with perfect horror.” “Well,” rejoined Muriel, with nonchalant gaiety, “you know what Mercutio says: ‘Their eyes were made to see and let them look.’” “And then your studies,” ran on Emily. “Perfectly omnivorous. French, German, Italian, Latin, music, drawing, painting, moulding, science, poetry, history, oratory, philosophy, Shakspeare, Bacon, Dante, Plato, Goethe, Swedenborg.” “And Fourier,” interpolated Muriel. “I’ve added him to my list, you know, and Uncle Lemuel says I ought to blush to own that I read him. The poor man thinks Fourier had hoofs and horns and a harpoon tail.”