Was it not Madame de Genlis who described the education in manners under the old régime of France? In her memoirs she speaks of hating Paris, when she came from the provinces, for the ordeal she underwent there to fit her for polite society. She was taught, what she fancied she knew already, how to walk, and was placed in the stocks two or three hours a day to teach her the right position of her feet in standing. A corset and back-board were provided to form an erect habit. Whether in her day or later ones, the elegancies of manner are not cultivated without sincere pains. Nature, indeed, creates some models of such refined proportions and such informing spirit that they fall at once into the curves of grace; but these are meant for models, and happily nothing forbids those of lesser merit to attempt the same lesson. Are not some born masters of the piano, full-flown at once over the first difficulties of music? But does this hinder any pupil from six hours’ daily drill, if need be, to grasp the same difficulties? The one end is to be attained, whether instantly or not; and in some cases the most laborious is by all means the most delightful player. Courage, then. The same thing is true of other efforts than those of the key-board; and it is quite as certain that the woman who trains herself to be graceful will be so, as that the clumsy young pedant at the scales will, in time, rush victoriously through the “Shower of Pearls,” the “Cascade of Roses,” or any other drawing-room favorite of gelatinized octaves. For the first comfort, it must be owned that American women have the least natural grace of any nation in the world. English women are usually well trained in a sort of martinet propriety of attitude which suits their solid contours; but neither Anglo-Saxon race knows an approach to those lengthened curves, those bends of every slender joint and supple muscle, which fill the eye in looking at a woman of Latin race. I watched a Spanish-American girl in the gallery of the United States Senate one night, in order to seize, if possible, her charm of gesture. She was rounded, yet fine in figure, and seemed to be, as I can best phrase it, all muscle. No one could think of her bones as having any more stiffness than the pliant sprays of an elm. She leaned on the railing of the balcony, not straight forward as even the elegant and delicate diplomatic English ladies did, but lengthwise, as if reclining; and the bend of her supple wrist, with the black and gold fan, was simply inimitable to an American woman. Those intransferable curves bewitched the eye even to pain; but something was gained in that five minutes’ study which I reduce to two points: Sideway movements and attitudes please more than those either forward or backward. The secret of grace is to teach every joint of the body to bend all that it can.