In brief, a woman of real culture is the woman who makes you instinctively feel, when in her company, that she is just what she was meant to be; harmoniously developed in accordance with her natural capacity. There is nothing startling about her paraded attainments. The extreme simplicity of a person of true culture is one of the most marked traits, and the chief point that distinguishes spurious from real culture is that the former is inclined to “tall talk” and the latter is not. Charles Dickens can still make us smile at his caricature of an American L. L. (literary lady) and her remarks on her introduction to some great personage. She immediately begins— “Mind and matter glide swift into the vortex of Immensity. Howls the sublime, and softly sleeps the calm Ideal in the whispering chambers of Imagination. To hear it, sweet it is. But then outlaughs the stern philosopher and saith to the Grotesque: ‘What ho; arrest for me that Agency! Go, bring it here!’ And so the vision fadeth.” The woman of culture does not attempt fine talking, and it is only gradually that her power and charm dawn upon her companion. “It is proof of a high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.” In the same manner simplicity is a proof of high breeding. The people who are “somebody” are, as a rule, easy to “get on” with. It is the rich “parvenue” who is disconcerting, and who tries to drag into her conversation the names of great people or great doings that will impress her companion. When we observe this sort of thing in a woman, we always know she is not “to the manner born.” So when we hear people declare, “I am afraid of So-and-so because she is so clever,” we feel that, if there is ground for their fear, there is something defective in the clever one’s culture. WHY SHOULD CULTURE BE DESIRED? It opens the eye and ear to the beauty and greatness of the world, revealing wonders that could not otherwise be understood, and bringing with it a wealth of happiness; and more, it gives an understanding of life in its due proportion. The woman of culture is not the woman who objects to perform necessary tasks at a pinch because they are “menial,” or takes offence at imaginary slights, or is for ever fussing about her domestic duties and her servants, or gets up little quarrels and “storms in a teacup” generally, or delights in ill-natured gossip. She sees how ineffably small such things are, and she sees them in this light because she has the width of vision which enables her to discern the meaning of life as a whole. Those whose eyes have once been opened to the beauty and pathos that lie around their path, even in the common round of daily duty, do not notice the dust that clings to their shoes.