"It is not newspaper criticisms to which I refer," answered Percy. "Of course, half the success of an actress, a singer, an author or a painter depends upon public criticism, and often it happens that the severer the criticisms the greater the success. But it is the loose familiarity and the coarse jests of the item-seeker of which I speak. Only last week I saw a wretched little item, intended to be humorous, but actually brutal, going the rounds of the press, concerning the advanced years of a famous opera singer, a woman who has reflected credit on our nation by her brilliant and stainless career." "I saw the item to which you refer," Mr. Elliott said, "and I wondered if it was consistent with the National boast that Americans are the kindest and most thoughtful men in the world toward ladies. It seemed to me an uncalled-for and ungentlemanly incivility toward a noble lady." "I often wonder," continued Percy, "if the fellows who perpetrate those things stop and consider that the public women, whose names they use so freely, are _somebody's_ sisters, wives, or mothers, and that, in nine cases out of ten, they lead a public life, or first entered a public career, to earn a living. If the newspaper men of the country ever do take this view of the matter, I should think their first impulse would be to shield and protect and _help_ every self-supporting woman in the land. At all events, I should think every sensible journalist would realize that, while it is the province of the newspaper to furnish able criticism on the voice of the singer, the book of the author, the speech of the orator, it is not its province to indulge in poor puns, or insulting comments on the age, the personal defects, or the domestic life of the singer, author or speaker. These things should be tabooed by respectable journals, just as they are tabooed in respectable society. Our journalists should be as careful, in their references to the private matters of individuals in print, as they are in conversation in their parlors, where scandalous or impertinent references to the absent would be considered 'bad form.' Really, I do not understand how any of us who read the daily papers dare boast of American chivalry." "The chivalry of the average man," said Dolores, who approached the group just at this moment, "consists in protecting a woman against every man save himself. And now, gentlemen, we are to have a recitation from Madame Volkenburg. Will you join us and listen?" CHAPTER X. A DISCOURSE ON SUICIDE. One day Mrs. Butler, Dolores, Percy, and several of their friends went to visit the Latin Quarter--the ancient homes of the Grisettes--a race rapidly becoming extinct. "I have always wanted to visit this locality," Dolores said on her way thither. "It is a phase of Parisian life which has possessed a curious fascination for me."