"But you ought to have been concealed where you could have overheard our council. It lasted till near morning, and the first half of it was stormy enough. Fanny declared she would die first. Mattie said she would put on an old dress, and go round begging cold victuals. Angie proposed that they should go into the attic, and give their rooms up to boarders, and have it understood that they had just taken a few friends for company. But, before we retired, we were all of one mind; we all saw that everything but the store was likely to prove a weak, temporary dodge. "It is just as you told me,--that their life of indolence and selfish indulgence had brought every mean trait to the surface; but that when the depths were stirred I should find they were true women. Yes, thank God, they are true women, as brave girls as ever lived. I can't tell you how happy we all are. They kissed us on coming to the breakfast table this morning for the first time in their lives. We are entering a new life. They already begin to wonder how they could have lived such a life of idleness and good- for-nothingness. I can't thank you enough. When the girls are quite settled in their new life, I will tell them all about it, and they will invite you down to spend an evening, and then they will thank you themselves." "Save yourself that trouble," I replied. "The fact is, the idea is not original with me; half the men in town feel just as I do about this fashionable idleness among fashionable women. In thousands of families it involves a system of studied, mean pretence, fraud, and final ruin. "Besides, we all see that, under its baneful influence, women sadly deteriorate. "Without a regular occupation, no person, male or female, can preserve a sound mind in a sound body." IDLENESS IS FASHIONABLE. Nothing, perhaps, is more fashionable than idleness. We all agree, in theory, at least, that the meaning of life is found in that little word--use; that the happiness of life is found in--work; that to be idle is to be miserable. Here, however, we must make a distinction. This law is supposed to apply only to men. Men must have an occupation. If a man is without one, we at once begin to suspect he must have some evil designs upon society. The law adds to the punishment, if the culprit has "no visible means of support." That alone is a strong fact against him. Not only the law, but public sentiment demands that every man shall do something. "He is an idler," disgraces a man almost beyond any other statement.