That is, I believe, a clear presentation of your state of mind and its dilemma. Having read of the vicissitudes of Mrs. Alexander Sherman, you have probably a more distinct idea of what you ought not to do; but would have a right to argue that a mere warning loses half its force unless a substitute be supplied. To begin with, you are correct in your assumption--you see I credit you with a considerable intelligence--that if you hope to be effective you must not be content with mere aristocratic elegance. That is a requisite which will gain you a standing within certain narrow limits, and if cleverly cherished, may bring you a surface reputation which the society newspapers will vie with each other to enhance. The acquirement of mere fine ladyism is going on actively in our society, and though it has not turned the heads of so many American women as its opposite, superficial democratic smartness, it seems too apt to fill the breasts of its votaries with a pleasing self-satisfaction, which no suggestion that the gift is not original serves to disturb. It is a product of and inheritance from the older civilizations, and in its most precious but not its exaggerated form, is absolutely essential to the most highly evolved womanhood. A fringe of our people in the North and in the South, and latterly in the West, has always insisted on and cultivated it, generally with much credit, and has thereby evoked the taunt that they were out of sympathy with the institutions of the country. That has been far less true than demagogues would have us believe, but there has been enough truth in it, and there is still enough truth in it to put our well-bred class--"society people," as they are called--on their guard against themselves. There is certainly nothing essentially American in conventional fine manners and in the conventional social tone which people of breeding the world over cultivate, and where these are the possessor's chief or only title to superiority, and are worn as such, there is room for the sneer that he or she is not an American at heart.