Can we have a college for women and save ourselves. and them from these dangers and damages? We believe it is possible; and, furthermore, we believe that if it is not possible, we had better throw our money into the river, and stop building Women's Colleges altogether. Women, as a rule, are better educated for their positions than men are, now. There are no great exigencies in the case, and there is no reason for exposing hundreds of girls to the perils of college life as they at present exist. If we can have a college in which these perils are mainly avoided, let us have it; if we cannot, the quicker the buildings burn down, and the longer they remain burned down, the better.

Smith College will do a great thing for America and woman if it can furnish a college education and avoid the college perils. We can think of only one way in which this can be accomplished, and that is, instead of having the girls all under one roof, to bring them under twenty. Let the college consist of one central building, for class and assembly rooms, and of tasteful dwelling-houses, each capable, say, of boarding twenty girls. Let each dwelling-house be conducted by a professor, who, with his wife and children, shall form the center of the family. Insist that there shall be a real family in every house, and it will not be hard for every young woman to feel that, for the time, she is a member of it. Do not shut out men from the daily conduct of school affairs. Have no church or chapel on the place. Smith College is located almost in the center of one of the most thriving and beautiful of New England villages.

The

There are, within easy walking distance of the college grounds, Baptist, Methodist, Congregational, and Episcopal churches, into which the pupils should all go according to their varied predilections, and in which they should be encouraged to engage in active work. The Sunday Schools of Northampton, every one, should be enriched by these young workers. girls would thus become a blessing to the town, and the effect upon themselves would be eminently healthful. We regard this matter as of prime importance. Don't shut the girls up on Sunday to one another. Don't undertake to run any theological machine in connection with the institution. Wherever it is safe to do so, let the girls come into vital contact with society, and if they can do so at all they can do so on Sunday, and in connection with the work of the church.

We do not know whether the Trustees of Smith College have settled upon their plans or not, but we can safely say to them that the country expects of them something which it has not had. It expects a bold, original move in the right direction. It expects some plan that shall not shut up three hundred women together, away from all family influence and beyond the possibility of family sentiment and feeling, -some plan that will connect the college with the world. If there is any plan better than that which we have outlined, let us have it; but if we must have the same over again, that has already been done too often, we shall wish that Sophia Smith had had less money, and had left that to-well-to us.

I FEEL inclined to speak only with the most profound respect of the Stagey Person. I am chagrined to find that the adjective here applied to him, while thoroughly descriptive, is at the same time somewhat jaunty to the ear and savorous of disesteem. I would wish my language, while conversant with such a theme as this, to move with fit and becoming stateliness, expressive not only of the character and bearing of the person alluded to, but of my appreciation of his many virtues and my awe of his deportment.

It is,

For he is as eminent in manners as he is in morals. In a word, he never forgets himself. More than that, he never forgets his part nor his audience. moreover, one of his most characteristic traits that the complexion, social grade, appreciativeness, and numbers of his audience are all alike indifferent to him. He is a true artist. He plays to well-nigh empty benches with the same lofty standards in view as ever animate his action before a full and enthusiastic house. The applause of the pit, let it be said to his credit, is received with the same flattering assumption as that of the private boxes.

Of course my gentle reader has not allowed this seductive simile of the stage, so easily suggested by the

circumstances, to mislead him as to the object of my tribute. He is not a professional at all. Indeed, I never heard of his indulging even in the amusement popularly known as "private theatricals," although this phrase might be with propriety selected as illustrating his entire method of life.

He never forgets himself, I said;-he never forgets his costume, his pose, his movement, his voice, his phrases, his background. Each is not only fine in itself, but has the proper relation to all the rest, as well as to the present situation-which includes occupation, time of day, and other minutiæ. A studied negligence in dress, diction, or surrounding, forms, of course, a legitimate part of the adaptation of everything to the intended effect. I can hardly find language sufficiently subtile by which to convey an impression of the fine modulations of his art. For though a lock of hair may have strayed, as if by accident, from its apparently legitimate position-mark you, it is with no coy or coquettish design, but merely a grave simulation of that in a spirit purely artistic-and in such a manner that no one is deceived. She would not have you for a moment suspect that her motives were anything but æsthetic, and you do not so suspect; her

picture (to change the figure) is full of the delicacies of half-tints and reflected lights.

Ah-that is the trouble. It is art, not nature. I have said often as she has swept by me on the street or in the saloon-What a master ! never, What a woman!

And yet I know that she is truly kind and womanly; admirable in all the relations of life; a gracious presence in her home and in society, and not without traits that are noble. But did you ever read Taine's comparison of Tennyson with Alfred de Musset?

I see that I have betrayed myself, and that my readers have discovered that my stagey person is by no means a man, as I at first weakly pretended. Never mind; I shall not change the pronouns. I feared that she might read this and be hurt, and I would rather cut off this hand than bring even a passing sorrow to her heart. But I am sure she has not read far enough to discover my ruse, and, judging from some former experience of mine in such matters, I am reasonably certain that even if her eyes are upon these words she will never suspect that her portrait has been placed in the Old Cabinet.

A FRIEND with a single fault! Have you never formed one of a little company all engaged in talking about just that one little fault of a friend? To the rest of us it is so apparent.

If it were not for the solitary

flaw we say, the dear boy, the dear girl, would be perfect. Sometimes it is fretfulness; sometimes conceit; sometimes a morbid self-abasement; sometimes a touch of selfishness; a disposition to dwell upon the failings of others; a faculty for interference; a lack of attention to personal appearance; procrastination-or dear knows what. Now is it not very much like a nightmare-the way we live in the same house with these people, year in and year out, and see the petty fault growing bigger and bigger, and can raise no voice against it-can do nothing but say "if, if, if,” "alas and alas!"

"O but we do speak!"

Yes, sometimes we do; and sometimes the warning voice is enough. But the tragedy appears in those cases where either the warning cannot be given, or where it is unheeded. A family might be described as a succession of conventicles, composed always of the same members, save that at each session a different member is absent, and is by the others apprehended and discussed in a way in which he can neither apprehend nor discuss himself.

It has come to be considered a point of humorto be played upon as may happen-that we can see other people's faults so much better than our own. Now while this is very true, it is also very true that we do generally know our own faults, have had at least side-glimpses of them, and that they grow upon us because we dread to apply the knife; because, to be honest, we are every one of us shirks, more or less.

In these slight etchings of character you know I do not care to seize upon those patent vices-or (let me call them) follies—and virtues which flaunt along the

street, and with which every one is familar enough; but rather to look up from my desk at the ordinary man or woman who goes past the window on the lawn, or comes in to dust the room, or spend an evening with me, with his or her ordinary failings and attainments. In other words, my gentle reader, nothing would please me more than to give you the sensa tion of coming unexpectedly upon a mirror; I should like you to be startled at seeing your own face look up at you from the page.

So my friend Philip hardly answers my purpose as an example-he who began by being very fine in his moral purposes, and very clean in his person, who gradually neglected his appearance till he became more than untidy, and ended in complete personal demoralization and moral dirt. I saw how it all began; he shirked his duty with regard to soap and water. He knew he shirked his duty; knowing it, he did not cease to do so,—and ungodliness followed uncleanliness in natural sequence.

One of the signs of advancing age is our acceptance of certain foibles, of which our friends have told us, and which up to this year of grace we had been in the habit of looking upon as mere accidental and transient peculiarities. It is a sad day for us when we make that acceptance. There is some hope for us when the joke about our prospect of being fifteen minutes late at the door of Heaven has a certain sharp freshness; but when we settle down into the conviction that we are likely to be lives behindhand all our-well, perhaps the first gray hair has not been discovered, perhaps the grasshopper is not yet a burden, but we are "ageing."

The older and wiser I grow the more am I impressed with the idea of every man's personal responsibility. Make what allowance you will for taint in the blood, sordid circumstance, and all that, I believe more and more that every soul has a chance. I doubt if there is any well deep and dark and smooth-walled enough to keep a poor devil down if he is determined to get to the top of it. He will win out if he wants to hard enough. It is wonderful how good-luck follows the hospitable mind and honest endeavor.

I wish my friend the parson would hurry up that essay of his on "How not to go Mad!"

Morning, Noon and Night.

THE mountain that the morn doth kiss,
Glad greets its shining neighbor:
Lord! heed the homage of my bliss,-
The incense of my labor!

Sharp smites the sun like burning rain,
And field and flower languish :
Hear, Lord! the prayer of my pain,-
The pleading of my anguish !

Now the long shadows eastward creep,
The golden sun is setting:
Take, Lord! the worship of my sleep,—
The praise of my forgetting!.

A Plea for Age.

THE semi-annual house-cleanings being imminent, we want to say a word in behalf of the old things. After each carnival of soap and water, dusting-cloths and scrubbing-brushes, some ancient piece of furniture is apt to be banished to a back chamber, or to an odd corner in the attic. It may have had the misfortune to break a leg, or lose an arm, or to be so generally nicked and unsightly as to render further association with comely modern contrivances impossible. But it may also be hustled out merely because it is old, and this is an insult and an injury which it has never merited.

What can be more hopelessly, helplessly unhomelike and inhospitable than a parlor full of span-new furniture? There stand the chairs, and sofas, and tables, staring you out of countenance with their uncompromising freshness.

Pretty, graceful though

they be, still they are so reeking with newness as to repel when they should attract. Even a well-worn door-mat is some relief; but a familiar lounge, a tattered "sleepy hollow," an every-day footstool, will leaven the whole.

Ancient furniture is much in vogue now, and those who have it, without buying it at ruinous rates, may consider themselves fortunate. Mahogany chairs, straight of back and broad of seat, such as are common nowhere but in New England, are sought far and wide. Those monuments of mahogany, half secretary and half chest of drawers, that were at once the emblem of the solidity and solemnity of our ancestors, are seized upon with avidity by relic-buyers. Cheval glasses, pier-tables, claw-footed tables, and numberless last-century bits, are deemed rare prizes. A dish of one's great-grandmother's dinner-service is regarded with awe, while one's great-grandfather's silver-capped cane is preserved with care.

Doubtless much of this newly-aroused admiration for the ancient is simply affectation, but there is much genuine liking as well. Time-honored household gods are one of the few links with the fast obscuring past that this rapid and iconoclastic age has left us; therefore let us adore them while we may,— -as long as they have a leg to stand on or an arm to uphold.

Coming Styles.

OF Autumn modes it is hardly time to speak definitely, only one thing being assured. The promise of plainness, made in the early Summer, will be strictly kept. Superabundant flounces and furbelows will take an unlimited leave of Winter wardrobes, and artistic simplicity reign in their stead. How our weary and over-dressed women have sighed for this change, they only are aware; and that they will hail the new order with delight is undoubted. It is hinted that the prospective styles will require not more than half the quantity of the past; but this is a dream that seems impossible of realization.

It is not improbable that the newly-modeled garments may have a "skimpy" appearance, but familiarity will soon arrange that, and once accustomed to it, weary eyes will be thankful they are no longer compelled to wander over vast fields of flutings and hedgerows of headings.

Plainness of fabric, no less than of fashion, is to be the rule. New goods, different from any yet produced, will soon be shown, and new colors, or rather new shades, are imminent. The tints and doubledistilled shades of last year were so unbecoming to Americans that the dry-goods houses are importing only novel hues, which it is expected will satisfy the most exacting.

Reform in Dress.

WITH all the talk to be heard on every side about reform in women's dress, very little of it points to any really wise and practical solution of the much mooted question. It is easy to discover the evils, but most difficult to present the remedy. Plausible theories are as plenty as grapes in Malaga, but practicable suggestions as rare as water in the desert. Some persons seem to think that to be hideous is to be healthy; while others hold that short skirts are but another name for prolonged existence.

Hygienically considered, it is scarcely questionable that feminine attire is not all that is desirable; but, thus far, no very acceptable substitute has been offered, even by the most radical reformers. Meanwhile, a few alterations will make the existing costume less injurious and certainly quite endurable, till the perfect model, that is to be at once beautiful and healthful, shall be evolved from somebody's interior consciousness. In the first place, waists should be made loose enough to permit a full expansion of chest and lungs, when the dress is buttoned. This is quite possible without looking baggy or wrinkling, if the corsets and underwaist are as loose as they should be. The same system should be tried when lacing corsets, and these should be tied when the chest is expanded. Then they will cease to do harm by compressing the lungs, and will do good by sustaining the skirts.

Waists ought to be cut very short on the shoulder, to give perfect freedom to the movements of the arm, which cannot be free where the arm-hole comes low down over the shoulder-joint. If not tight, plain waists, with biases, are probably as healthy as full loose waists, there being no more cloth in them than is actually needed, and not so much tendency to drag from the shoulder.

It would, undoubtedly, be generally better were the weight of a woman's dress supported by her shoulders; but to some women this is so painful as to be nauseating. Therefore, the next best way seems to be to have as little weight as possible hung from the hips. Shorter skirts, scantily trimmed, especially

for the street and ordinary use, are very desirable. Trains are unquestionably graceful, but to constantly drag about the heavy folds of a trailing robe cannot be otherwise than unwholesome. Since the blessed fashion of walking-dresses, cut at a convenient length, was introduced, women have taken at least twice as much out-door exercise as formerly, and they are just so much the stronger for it. But recently there has been a tendency toward long street-dresses, which must be either speedily repressed, or there is an end of long, vigorous, life-preserving walks for our girls. Exercise in the fresh air has but begun to be appreciated by our women as a means of, retaining not only health but beauty. And for its full enjoyment| they must have a convenient and simple costume, which shall be the one they ordinarily wear, so that no consideration of change of attire need prevent their going out of doors at any moment their occupations will permit.

Even these few suggestions, if carefully observed, will make the present dress less objectionable until a better can be had.

Domestic Silks.

AMONG the very best goods in the market for Autumn and Winter are the American silks. They are heavy and warm, of excellent material, fine in colorcoming in all the rich, dull browns, grays, plums, greens and maroons as well as black-and, more than all, they wear, femininely speaking, forever. They are not so handsome as the foreign silks, are not so smoothly finished; but they will outlast two or three of those. It is partly the smooth finish of the French and Belgian silks that makes them crack and wear shiny, as they are so likely to do nowadays. In the concluding processes of manufacture, they are passed over hot cylinders to give them the required lustre, but the heat injures the thread, and renders it liable to break. But the most serious cause of this defect is the extensive adulteration of the material used. The demand for silk has greatly increased in the last ten or fifteen years. Women who had two silk gowns twenty years ago, now have six, or eight, or ten in their place. Where silk was formerly used only for important occasions, it is now constantly and indiscriminately worn for house, street, shopping, church, even for morning. To meet this new demand, which came with heavier expenses for labor, manufacturers have been too often forced to sell poor articles instead of good ones, but poor articles of fair appearance. Nobody is willing to pay even a small price for an inferior looking stuff. Many, however, are beguiled into buying that which is actually bad, but seems good. To produce a handsome lustrous silk at a moderate price the makers have created a flimsy fabric, filling it in with oxides of lead and other substances in the dye to give it the proper weight; trusting wholly to the satiny finish to make it salable. When the sale of silks depended upon their real worth only worthy qualities were to be had; but now, when anything

under the name of silk can be sold, every grade of the goods is alike put forward by the dealers.

The $2 American silk, which is objected to by many because it resembles a nice poplin more than a fine silk, is the most serviceable and thoroughly satis factory made in the country. It can be washed like a piece of white cloth, and seems never to suffer from the ordinary exigencies of apparel. We know a lady who wore one five years, and during that period had it subjected three times to the wash-tub.

The American silks which come at $2.50, $3.00, and even as high as $3.50 a yard, we believe, have the foreign virtue of a smooth finish; but with the virtue have, perhaps, some of the foreign vices as well.

Besides these different qualities of dress-silks, there are made in this country beautiful foulards, both plain and twilled; soft twilled silks, such as heretofore have been chiefly used for neckties, but which will be widely employed for trimming and drapery the coming season, gros-grain ribbons, black and colored beltings, white and colored silk handkerchiefs, and numerous other articles.

Homekeeping versus Housekeeping.

THE truest homes are often in houses not especially well kept, where the comfort and happiness of the inmates, rather than the preservation of the furni ture, is first consulted. The object of home is to be the center, the point of tenderest interest, the pivot on which family life turns. The first requisite is to make it attractive, so attractive that none of its inmates shall care to linger long outside its limits. All legitimate means should be employed to this end, and no effort spared that can contribute to the purpose. Many houses called homes, kept with waxy neatness by painstaking, anxious women, are so oppressive in their nicety as to exclude all home-feeling from their spotless precincts. The very name of home is synonymous with personal freedom and relaxation from care. But neither of these can be felt where such a mania for external cleanliness pervades the household as to render everything else subservient thereto. Many housewives, if they see a speck on floor or wall, or even a scrap of thread or bit of paper on the floor, rush at it, as if it were the seed of pestilence which must be removed on the instant. Their temper depends upon their maintenance of perfect purity and order. If there be any failure on their part, or any combination of circumstances against them, they fall into a pathetic despair, and can hardly be lifted out. They do not see that cheerfulness is more needful to home than all the spotlessness that ever shone. Their disposition to wage war upon maculateness of any sort increases until they become slaves of the broom and dust-pan. Neatness is one thing, and a state of perpetual house-cleaning quite another.

Out of this grows by degrees the feeling that certam things and apartments are too good for daily use.

Hence, chairs and sofas are covered, and rooms shut up, save for special occasions, when they are permitted to reveal their violated sacredness in a manner that mar every pretense of hospitality. Nothing should be bought which is considered too fine for the fullest domestic appropriation. Far better is the plainest furniture, on which the children can climb, than satin and damask which must be viewed with reverence. Where anything is reserved or secluded, to disguise the fact is extremely difficult. A chilly air wraps it round, and the repulsion of strangeness is experienced by the most insensible.

There are few persons who have not visited houses where they have been introduced to what is known as the company parlor. They must remember how uncomfortable they were while sitting in it; how they found it almost impossible to be at ease, and mainly

for the reason that their host and hostess were not themselves at ease. The children were watched with lynx eyes, lest they should displace or soil something; so that the entertainment of friends became very much like a social discipline. They must recall, too, how sweet the fresh air seemed out-of-doors, and how they inwardly vowed, in leaving that temple of form and fidgetiness, that something more than politeness would be required to incite them to return.

Home is not a name, nor a form, nor a routine. It is a spirit, a presence, a principle. Material and method will not, and cannot make it. It must get its light and sweetness from those who inhabit it, from flowers and sunshine, from the sympathetic natures which, in their exercise of sympathy, can lay aside the tyranny of the broom and the awful duty of endless scrubbing.

The New York Central Park. SINCE the articles on the New York Central Park were written, the ill news has come to us that Mr. Stebbins, who has so long been President of the Central Park Commission, has resigned his position, and that his resignation has been accepted. This is an event to be seriously regretted, and it cannot fail to be regretted by all who know how well Mr. Stebbins has filled the difficult post of President, and how much he has done toward making the administration of the Park what it has been, the one thing in our city gov. ernment which decent citizens could contemplate with honest satisfaction. But it makes those who have the interests of the Park at heart still more uncomfortable to know the reasons why Mr. Stebbins has resigned the Presidency. It is, purely and simply, because he is tired of fighting with the politicians. These men were battering at his door night and day, in season and out of season, crying like the daughters of the horse-leech, "Give! give!" They want places for their friends, and they demand them as a right; they insist upon being paid in kind, as it were, for their services in getting the party into power that gave the new Commissioners their places. It is an open secret that there has been a steady fight with the politicians ever since the Park was created, and that they have not been kept at bay without much labor and sorrow. But, until the Ring got into power, they were kept at bay, and the Park was perhaps the only public department in America where politics were forbidden to enter. No man was ever appointed to any place in the Park service, from the lowest to the highest, from political consideration; and so far as human power could avail to make it so, the politics of the men employed in the works were as free from interference or dictation as those of any other private citizens. We believe all

VOL. VI-48

the Commissioners were united in the endeavor to keep the record clean in this respect. With Messrs. Olmstead, Vaux and Green, this was a religion, and the record of their administration is an honorable exception to the usual history of such affairs in our country. Then there came a melancholy break when the Ring burst in and trampled with their hoofs over the Central Park and its orderly government, and broke down the palings and made room for all the rest of the unclean herd. We had hoped there had been a recovery, but it seems not: another set of men have taken the place of the fellows who are hiding from justice, and are doing all they can to drag the Central Park down to a level with all our public administrations. We wish Mr. Stebbins could have felt strong enough to go on fighting them to the end, for they must be fought if we would preserve the Central Park for the people.

Huxley's Addresses.*

It may seem paradoxical, but it is nevertheless true, that a mind which is singularly affirmative, not to say positive, in one direction, is often at the same time as singularly negative in another direction. A mind which sees certain truths, or supposed truths, with unusual clearness, and is willing to accept these truths upon even a slender basis of testimony, is often disposed to reject truths of a different order, even when these are supported by a broader foundation of evidence. At the present moment modern science, though we may reasonably hope that the tendency is not inherent and ineradicable, undoubtedly tends to produce minds which are thus lop-sided and unequal, and it may fairly be said that few more prominent and

Critiques and Addresses. By Thomas Henry Huxley, LL.D., F.R.S. New York: D. Appleton & Co.