it would be white muslin, or light silvery green silk, trimmed with pleatings of tulle, and with them she would wear her mother’s pearls, or her own fine carbuncles. Mrs. Senator, with all her fortune and position, is doomed to hear people speak of her in under-tones at parties, “She is rich, but very plain.” Being a shrewd woman, she does not waste her efforts on trying to alter her thin features, nor does she make herself ridiculous by a false complexion of rouge and pearl-powder, though her face and her hair are about of a brownness. But on her entry into Washington society she defied criticism by appearing with her hair créped to show its soft brown lights and shades, and give the best outline to her head, her gypsy face opposed to a dead white silk, of Parisian origin, with flounce of pleated muslin, and corsage trimmings of rich lace. It is a real dress and a real woman that is described, and it is no fiction that she was the success of the evening. The colorless dress without _reflets_, and her ornaments of clustered pearls, were in most artistic contrast to the nut-brown hair and dusky face. A spot of color would have destroyed the charm. The dress stamped her, as she was, a woman of skill sufficient to draw from the most unlikely combination the elements of novel and complete success. The girl who sits near me at the hotel table tries my eyes with her thin, curious features, her pale, frizzed hair, that makes her face more peaked than it is, and her oversized skirts. She ought not to wear those light dresses, for she has no color, and her thin complexion is not even clear. She has that difficult figure to dispose of, which is at once girlish and tall, without seeming so. A trained dress would make her look lean, so she should dispense with a large tournure, and let her dresses brush the floor a few inches, wearing as many small flounces below the knee as fashion and sense allow. If her mother, who is rather a strict lady, would insist on having the girl’s dresses made with puffed waists, or loose blouses of thick linen, instead of the Victoria lawns that iron so flat, and show the poor shoulder-blades frightfully, the effect would be rather delightful. She ought to wear puffed grenadines and lenos of maroon, rosy lilac, or deep green--the first lighted with pale rosy bows at the throat and in the hair, the latter with light green and white, the lilac with periwinkle knots. How one would like to dress her over again, and turn the poor thing out charming as she ought to be. Her hair-dressing would all have to be done over again. Sharp-featured people shouldn’t wear curls, which make the peaked effect still more prominent. Soft waves, drawn lightly away from the face and brushed up from the neck behind, would be better, and smooth braids best of all, with little waves peeping out under them. If the young woman could train herself not to be excitable, or to smile so overcomingly, and not be so eager to meet new acquaintances, she would