This decay of decency began with the advent of that loathsome amalgam of vanity and reckless extravagance in dress and speech, the Professional Beauty, whose profession first became recognised about the year 1879. You will not find that ‘profession’ entered under ‘Trades’ in the _Post-Office Directory_; but if logic ruled the world, then the shameless women whose photographs for years filled the shop-windows of town would find their trade recognised on the same commercial standing with any one of the thousand and one ways of getting a living shown in that volume. They would be on precisely the same moral level with the _quasi_ milliners of London, had necessity brought about their flaunting pervasion of Society, but, seeing that merely the love of admiration and notoriety induced their careers, it is difficult to find a depth sufficiently deep for them. But indignation is apt to melt into a scornful pity when we see the Professional Beauty of sixteen years ago, who left her husband for the questionable admiration of great Personages and the envy of London Society, a faded and struggling woman of the world, who, without a shred of histrionic ability, has taken to the stage, relying upon the magnificence of her diamonds and the _abandon_ of her dress for an applause which had never been hers for her acting or her elocution. A just resentment fades into melancholy commiseration for a woman like this, who has sunk so low that scandal can no longer harm her; who essays the _rôle_ of ‘beauty’ when her years are rapidly totting up to fifty. These are the tawdry careers which, appealing to woman’s innate love of admiration, bid her go and do likewise. The contempt with which all right-thinking men regard the spotted and fly-blown records of the Professional Beauties is hidden from them by the glare of publicity, and vanity still bids them adventure out from the home before the eye of the world. One does not find the New Women justified of their sex, for cosmetics have no commerce with common sense, and high heels are not conducive to lofty thinking; rouge, violet powder, tight-lacing, or an inordinate love of jewellery, are not earnest of brain-power; and yet these are the commonest adjuncts to, or characteristics of, a woman’s life. The sight of many diamonds at Kimberley impressed Lord Randolph Churchill mightily awhile ago, and the contemplation of those glittering objects of feminine adornment led to the historic pronouncement that ‘whatever may have been the origin of man,’ he is ‘coldly convinced that womankind are descended from monkeys.’ However that may be, certain it is that imitation is, equally with the simians, her _forte_. Men originate almost everything; even the fashions are set and controlled by M. Worth, and women follow his lead, both dressmakers and clients.