comparison which you feel disposed to make between yourself and the ladies in question. And yet I would not have you fail to appreciate at their full worth the exquisiteness of the heroines of the French salons; the grace and nicety of their manners, the brilliancy of their intelligence, and the thoroughness of their accomplishments. I have given you credit for recurring to them instinctively as models of form, and I should grieve to think that my reference to your superior domestic happiness should lead you to think your humility amiss. Do you know the President of any woman's club who reminds you, by her grace, her nicety, her brilliancy, and her thoroughness of what you imagine Madame de Staël, or Madame Récamier, or Madame Roland to have been? Possibly your patriotism, or even your sincere convictions, would induce you to answer this inquiry in the affirmative; and, indeed, I am ready to admit that we may have their counterparts among us; but certainly the country is not overrun with them, and I have no doubt that so discriminating a person as I imagine you to be will agree that the modern woman is often tempted to seek leadership on the strength of bumptiousness, smart ignorance, and that bustling spirit which those who possess it like to hear described as executive ability, instead of by virtue of the talents and graces of old aristocratic society. I quite realize, on the other hand, that the conditions under which you live are very different from those which existed when the brilliant and fascinating women whom I have specified, and others resembling them, flourished. They were, of course, the quintessence of civilized society, a small coterie living in the atmosphere of courts, seeking to control events by the force of their engaging personalities. I am writing to you, not as a member of a choice and select organization, from which most women were excluded by reason of their nothingness, but as the representative of a large and growing constituency which is open, in theory at least, if not practically, to the whole world of womanhood. For us, certainly, courts and their atmosphere exist no longer, and the opportunities afforded women by republican institutions to influence the course of political events are slight; but in many respects the outlook of modern woman upon life is essentially broader and no less interesting than the horizon of the mistress of the French salon. Of necessity it is less exclusive and more humanitarian, and by reason of the emancipation of woman as a social factor it includes consideration of the whole range of educational, philanthropic, and æsthetic interests in which democratic civilization is concerned. It seems indeed a long cry from the picturesque experience of a clever and fascinating Madame de Staël, braving the enmity of a Napoleon, or a Madame Roland reading her Tacitus and her Plutarch in the prison of St. Pélagie, to the nervous, bustling, afternoon-tea-frequenting, problem-hunting modern woman of