As an old woman the doll has not one charm. She has learned none of that handiness, come to none of that grand maternal power of helping others, which should accompany maturity and age and has still to be thought for and protected, to the exclusion of the younger and naturally more helpless, as when she was young herself, and beautiful and fascinating, and men thought it a privilege to suffer for her sake. Nine times out of ten she has lost her temper as well as her complexion, and has become peevish and unreasonable. She gets fat and rouges; but she will not consent to get old. She takes to false hair, dyes, padded stays, arsenic or 'anti-fat,' and to artful contrivances of every description; but alas! there is no 'dolly's hospital' for her as there used to be for her battered old prototype in the nursery lumber-closet; and, whether she likes it or not, she has to succumb to the inevitable decree, and to become faded, worn out, unlovely, till the final _coup de grâce_ is given and the poor doll is no more. Poor, weak, frivolous doll! it requires some faith to believe that she is of any good whatsoever in this overladen life of ours; but doubtless she has her final uses, though it would puzzle a Sanhedrim of wise men to discover them. Perhaps in the great readjustment of the future she may have her place and her work assigned to her in some inter-stellar Phalansterie; when the meaning of her helpless earthly existence shall be made manifest and its absurd uselessness atoned for by some kind of celestial 'charing.' _CHARMING WOMEN._ There are certain women who are invariably spoken of as charming. We never hear any other epithet applied to them. They are not said to be pretty, nor amiable, nor clever, though they may be all three, but simply charming; which we may take as a kind of verbal amalgam--the concentration and concretion of all praise. The main feature about these charming women is their intense feminality. There is no blurring of the outlines here; no confusion of qualities admirable enough in themselves but slightly out of place considering the sex; no Amazonian virtues which leave one in doubt as to whether we have not before us Achilles in petticoats rather than a true Pyrrha or a more tender Deidamia.