Volumes might be written upon the frightful consequences of this extravagance in money matters, this living too fast and beyond their means, of which American women, especially, are guilty. Great financial crises, in which colossal schemes burst like bubbles, and vast estates are swallowed up like pebbles in the sea; commercial bankruptcies, in which honorable names are bandied on the lips of common rumor, and white reputations blackened by public suspicion; minds, that started in life with pure and honest principles, determined to win fortune by the straight path of rectitude, gradually growing distorted, gradually letting go of truth, honor, uprightness, and ending by enthroning gold in the place made vacant by the departed virtues; hearts, that were once responsive to the fair and beautiful in life and in the universe, that throbbed in unison with love, pity, kindness, and were wont to thrill through and through at a noble deed or a fine thought, now pulseless and hard as the nether millstone; souls, that once believed in God, heaven, good, and had faith and hope in immortality, now worshipping commercial success and its exponent, money, and living and dying with their eager but fading eyes fixed earthward, dustward! Oh, it is a fearful thought that woman's extravagant desires and demands may thus kill all that is best and highest in those who should be her nearest and dearest. Yet, if this wide-spread evil of wastefulness is to be checked, it must be begun in the home, and by its guardian, woman. There is a movement lately inaugurated, looking to retrenchment in the matter of unnecessary expenditure, which, if it is to be regarded other than as a temporary expedient, is worthy of the patriotic enthusiasm which called it forth. I allude to the dress-reform movement made by the loyal women of the great Northern cities. The _spirit_ of this movement I could wish to see illustrated both during the continuance of and after the war. It is this economical habit of mind for the sake of patriotic principle, that I regard as a great step in the attainment of the desired standard for American women.