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108 yet soared? At all events, I believe, with Mrs. Stowe, that the experiment is worth trying. A true civilization should overlook none of the marked tendencies of humanity; and should women ever form associations among themselves for the higher culture of other æsthetic branches, I hope they will by no means leave out the drama.

And what shall be the golden roof, the crown of our new civilization? Surely, a splendid society, presided over by ladies famous for their beauty, their wit, or their tact, where every graceful element of human achievement may have free play, and every kindly impulse of human feeling full encouragement, because none "look on their own things, but all look also on the things of others." I confess I fear it is not to exist on this side of the New Jerusalem. For a perfect society is one wherein every person composing it is fitly placed; whereas in such a world of inequalities in wealth, in attractiveness, in pride, in culture, it is difficult to get more than half a dozen persons together who feel precisely on the same footing. Still, it is to be hoped that not then the women whose husbands have the most money, but the wise and stately matrons who are at the head of the co-operative kitchen, of the sewing-house, of the charitable and other departments, will be in some sort the acknowledged social leaders; for so we might eventually have what the women of rank give to society abroad,—a recognized standard of fine manners to which young people would be expected to conform. Thus American society would be taken out of the hands of the few brainless and generally intensely selfish young men who, with their chosen belles, "lead the German," and the intolerable rudeness and crudeness of our contemporary boy and girl régime would be abolished.

The plan of our palace is complete. There is a place in