If men have their dissipations, the women have theirs also. Your fashionable woman generally displays more tact than her husband. She has greater opportunities for display, and makes better use of them. If the ball, or party, or sociable at her residence is a success, the credit is hers exclusively, for the husband does little more than pay the bills. Many of these women are "from the ranks." They have risen with their husbands, and are coarse and vulgar in appearance, and without refinement. But the women of fashion are not all vulgar or unrefined. Few of them are well educated, but the New York woman of fashion, as a rule, is not only very attractive in appearance, but capable of creating a decided impression upon the society in which she moves. She is thoroughly mistress of all its arts, she knows just when and where to exercise them to the best advantage, she dresses in a style the magnificence of which is indescribable, and she has tact enough to carry her through any situation. Yet, in judging her, one must view her as a butterfly, as a mere creature of magnificence and frivolity. Don't seek to analyze her character as a wife or mother. You may find that the marriage vow is broken on her part as well as on her husband's; and you will most probably find that she has sacrificed her soul to the demands of fashion, and "prevented the increase of her family" by staining her hands in the blood of her unborn children. Or, if she be guiltless of this crime, she is a mother in but one sense--that of bearing children. Fashion does not allow her to nurse them. She cannot give to her own flesh and blood the time demanded of her by her "duties in society;" so from their very birth the little innocents are committed to the care of hirelings, and they grow up without her care, removed from the ennobling effect of a mother's constant watchful presence, and they add to the number of idle, dissolute men and women of fashion, who are a curse to the city. Your fashionable woman is all art. She is indeed "fearfully and wonderfully made." She is a compound frequently of false hair, false teeth, padding of various kinds, paint, powder and enamel. Her face is "touched up," or painted and lined by a professional adorner of women, and she utterly destroys the health of her skin by her foolish use of cosmetics. A prominent Broadway dealer in such articles sells thirteen varieties of powder for the skin, eight kinds of paste, and twenty-three different washes. Every physical defect is skilfully remedied by "artists;" each of whom has his specialty. So common has the habit of resorting to these things become, that it is hard to say whether the average woman of fashion is a work of nature or a work of art. Men marry such women with a kind of "taking the chances" feeling, and if they get a natural woman think themselves lucky. IV. FASHIONABLE CHILDREN.