Now, I cannot but think this waste of time and gratification of a childish curiosity in young women altogether wrong. The amount of “shopping,” as it is called, done from no necessity, but only to while away the time, is very great, particularly by young ladies who have no intention of purchasing. While there are books to be read, sewing to be done, mothers to be helped, and their burdens lightened by their daughters’ loving care, and painting, drawing, and music to be practiced, we don’t understand how time can hang heavy on one’s hands. Pleasant walks and rides, lectures, concerts, and picture-galleries, can surely furnish all the exercise and recreation that is needed or at all desirable, and will be much more conducive to the improvement of the mind and strengthening of the body than this too prevalent custom of sauntering through the streets, gazing into the windows, or visiting the stores, looking at and handling everything one fancies, but buying nothing. Many evils spring from this absurd method of _taking exercise_, or wasting time. There can be no healthy exercise in loitering in a crowded and perhaps ill-lighted, poorly ventilated store; for capacious, airy, and well-ventilated establishments are not common. The effect of such dissipation on the mind and character cannot be ennobling. To watch and criticise the people who pass, to remark on their dress, manners, and peculiarities, is almost certain to establish an unkind, censorious habit, and, in the end, make those who practice it confirmed gossips,--the most unlovable and unsafe of all characters. A love of dress; a desire to imitate or surpass those who are the most extravagant in their outlays; an envious disposition; dissatisfaction with their own condition and the income allowed for their dress; longing to cast aside good clothes and secure the newest and most stylish, every time the shopping farce is performed,--are some of the evils which, it is to be feared, will grow out of this propensity; and added to this, another still more to be deprecated,--the selfish disregard for the feelings and interests of others. It is painful to observe with what recklessness our young ladies will sit at a counter and call for one piece of goods after another, until the shelves before them are almost entirely stripped,--tossing one article here and another there, throwing heavy goods upon delicate articles, while the perplexed clerk endeavors to hide his anxiety, and shield his wares from harm, in the most gentlemanly and unobtrusive manner; but his politeness and delicacy are wasted, for this class of shoppers care little for the discomfort of a clerk. In this manner they flit from counter to counter, wasting not only their own time, but that of the employés in the store, and exciting false hopes of a good sale, and then, without a word of apology for the trouble they have given, leave that store to go through the same folly at other establishments.