I went to the nearest restaurant. It was an immense bakery patronized by office girls and men, hard workers who came for their only free moment of the day into this eating-place. Everything that could be swallowed quickly was spread out on a long counter, behind which there were steaming tanks of tea, coffee and chocolate. The men took their food downstairs and the ladies climbed to the floor above. I watched them. They were self-supporting women--independent; they could use their money as they liked. They came in groups--a rustling frou-frou announced silk underfittings; feathers, garlands of flowers, masses of trimming weighed down their broad-brimmed picture hats, fancy veils, kid gloves, silver side-bags, embroidered blouses and elaborate belt buckles completed the detail of their showy costumes, the whole worn with the air of a manikin. What did these busy women order for lunch? Tea and buns, ice-cream and buckwheat cakes, apple pie _a la mode_ and chocolate were the most serious menus. This nourishing food they ate with great nicety and daintiness, talking the while about clothes. They were in a hurry, as all of them had some shopping to do before returning to work, and they each spent a prinking five minutes before the mirror, adjusting the trash with which they had bedecked themselves exteriorly while their poor hard-working systems went ungarnished and hungry within. This is the wound in American society whereby its strength sloughs away. It is in this class that campaigns can be made, directly and indirectly, by preaching and by example. What sort of women are those who sacrifice all on the altar of luxury? It is a prostitution to sell the body's health and strength for gewgaws. What harmony can there be between the elaborate get-up of these young women and the miserable homes where they live? The idolizing of material things is a religion nurtured by this class of whom I speak. In their humble surroundings the love of self, the desire to possess things, the cherished need for luxuries, crowd out the feelings that make character. They are but one manifestation of the egoism of the unmarried American woman. For what and for whom do they work? Is their fundamental thought to be of benefit to a family or to some member of a family? Is their indirect object to be strong, thrifty members of society? No. Their parents are secondary, their health is secondary to the consuming vanity that drives them toward a ruinous goal. They scorn the hand-workers; they feel themselves a _noblesse_ by comparison. They are the American snobs whose coat of arms marks not a well-remembered family but prospective luxuries.... Married, they bring as a portion thriftless tastes, to satisfy which more than one business man has wrecked his career. They work like men; why should they not live as men do, with similar responsibilities? What should we think of a class of masculine clerks and employees who spent all their money on clothes?