I am taking for granted, too, that you are not nursing your social ambitions in the same nest with a faith in your own artistic genius. If you believe yourself to be an undiscovered queen of tragedy or an undeveloped poet or sculptor, or feel yourself inspired to write a novel or a play, please consider our correspondence at an end. In such a case, the rest of this letter is not for you. Not because I doubt your genius, but because I am certain that though artistic talent may continue to flourish in spite of a husband and a baby, it must inevitably languish and grow feeble when coupled as a running mate to a career of general, elegant, social usefulness such as I know you aspire to. If you possess artistic genius, or feel that you cannot be happy without testing your own talent in this respect, be satisfied to give one afternoon tea, and then practically renounce social initiative, unless you are prepared to alienate your husband, neglect your baby, or go to an asylum as a victim of triple-distilled nervous prostration. Assuming, then, that you are simply eager to help in working out the problems and fulfilling the destinies of your native civilization with benefit to society and credit to yourself, I see you again in your drawing-room a few days after your preliminary tea, inquiring what you are to do next. I see, too, disporting themselves in your thought, the images of the brilliant women of France of a century ago--such women as Madame de Staël, Madame Récamier, Madame Roland, and others, who influenced affairs of state by their intelligence and social graces. It may be that they have been alike your inspiration and your despair. You would fain follow in their footsteps, but feel a washerwoman as compared with them. Your ambition does you credit, Mrs. Alexander Sherman, and also, begging your pardon, your humble-mindedness. But there is no occasion for you to push either frame of mind to an extreme. Indeed, whether you be a washerwoman or not as compared with these ladies, they were not altogether admirable. I am writing to you as a woman thoroughly happy in the wedded state. You will recollect that of no one of those charming creatures could a similar statement be truthfully made. Madame Récamier's husband was three times her age. He offered, poor man, to consent to a divorce in order to allow his cherished wife to marry another; but she, out of pity for him in his adversity, for he had lost both royal favor and his estate, refused to take advantage of his magnanimity. Madame Roland told her husband, who was some twenty years her senior, her love for Buzot in order to protect herself from herself, and did not allow her feelings an outlet until, every possibility of meeting her lover having been removed by her death-sentence, she could express her passion without violation of duty. Very pretty behavior, but not exactly ideal marital relations, Mrs. Alexander Sherman. They should be taken into account in any