The Women Of Our Time.

niently assailed , and unjustly depreciated . The good old gals , ( rum stories are told about them , by the way , in their clays ) , the stupid old fogies who always will enact " Peter Grievous , " old maids who take an acidulated view of life and men and

everything , lecturers pounding the sentimental , or heaping up the agony , all these , and others to boot , arc loud in thoir dispraise of our young married women . If you believe them a general laxity pervades society , a moral breaking up is tbe attribute and characteristic of the present condition of social life . Hansom cabs

and latchkeys , bets and bonnets , low dresses and dressmaker's' bills , high heels and horse exercise in the park , are the " teterrima causa "' of this mournful state of affairs ! Well , I for one , do not believe it . Tbe alarmist may prophesy , and tbe pessimist may denouncebut I fancy that

, the greater part of this outcry is what Mi ' . Carlyle calls " bottled moonshine . " Society , in my bumble opinion , is not a bit bettor or Avorse essentially than it used to be , though its phases may be changed , though its outward manifestation may somewhat

vary , as the times come and go . The general tendency of the age is to be somewhat less reserved , more open , less ceremonious now in public life , than in the days when I was a young man in town . People live now-a-days much more in society , as a rule , than they did , and see more of one another hourly and daily than was the

Avont say titty years since . In my young days , as a rule , no one saw anything of anybody hardly , especially gentlemen or ladies , out of their own families of course , until luncheon time , and often , except in a carriage or the park , not again until the next evening ' s dinner or uanee . And

therefore with changing times come perforce changing habits of society . For customs vary with the tastes and temper of tbe moment , and even Avhat is considered " pour les inosurs " in one generation is not looked upon as the law of the " Medes

and Persians" in another . It was not , for instance , considered " comme il fkut " iu my days for ladies to be sees at many p laces they now olten go to , and therefore when , as mentor or moralist , as didactic teacher , or Diogenes from my tub , f am laying down an unalterable code , a strict enactment of the high moral line , or any

other line you like , I feel strongly , nevertheless , that I ought not to fix upon persons the blame that more properly belongs to things . What I mean is . Ave have no ri ght , as it appears to me , to condemn young married women for doing what the

common customs of the day in Avhich they live do not regard as either outre , mesquin , or unbecoming . That people are a little less formal in manners and living , I have already admitted ; that they are little more "in tbe open , " so to say , I have

already pointed out , and that many amusements and " distractions " are complacently sought after now , which Avould pot have been tolerated 50 years ago , I am fully aware of . But still I contend this is 'file fault of the times , not of the young

married Avomen , who onl y do as others do , who fall in with the general ruck of society in which their lot is cast , and , as the old saying runs , they "do at Rone what Rome does . " I quite feel tbe force of my friend ' s objection—the " Rev . Higgmbottom , " as the Frenchman calls

him" that it is the duty of us all to avoid any improper yielding to the Juggernaut of the world , " & c . So it is , if we can onl y agree as to what that Juggernaut reall y is , even in a general way . There are some things , no doubt , openly aud

corrupting degrading , about which there can be no doubt or question . There are some customs and habits of society which ;' ai-e so deadening and debasing , that any well-regulated mind will avoid ^' them and condemn them . But the question here is not

so much as regards great and notorious evil , but the common course of society , the simple way of fashion , and the world such as it is at this very hour . If there be wrong in it , if there be tainting mischief in it , if there be blinding deceit "

or dangerous attractions , as there are always in life , even at the best , they must all be met and mastered by the individual under a deep sense of personal dut y , and of a hi gher responsibility than what we can well touch upon here or now . But to blame tbe young married women because

society is generally less precise and formal thau _ it used to be , or more deregle and disjointed than perhaps once was , is , in my opinion , very unfair . The young married women have not created the present state of things ; they have inherited it from