The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1869-07-10

none the less truth, tnat 4 part OF the
reason for their being born at all is that
they may in their turn bear children. The
unnatural feeling against maternity exist
ing among fashionable women is one of the
worst mental signs of their state, as their
frequent inability to be mothers at all is
one of the worst physical results. This is
Il condition of things which no false med
esty or timid reserve should keep in the
background, for it is a question of national
Importance, and will soon become one of
national disaster unless checked by heal
thier current and more natural circum-
stances.
Dress dissipation, and flirting nuke up
| the questionable lines which enclose the life
of the fashionable woman, and which en-
close nothing useful, nothing good, nothing
deep OF true or holy. Her piety is pas
time; her art the poorest pretence; her
| pleasure consists only in hurry and excite
ment, alternating with debasing sloth, in
| heartless coquetry or in lawless indulgence,
as nature made her more vain or more sen-
sual. AS a wife she fulfils no wifely duty
in any grand or loving sense for the most
part regarding her husband only as bank
er or an adjunct, according to the terms Of
her marriage settlement; as mother she is
a stranger to her children to whom nurse
and governess supply her place, and give
such poor makeshift for material love as
| they are enabled or inclined. limo domes
tic relation is she in the smallest value, and
of none in any social circumstance beside
pretty,-and the help she gives to trade
through her expenditure. She lives only
in the gaslight, and her nature at last be-
comes as artificial as her habits. AS years
lodged belle to the femme passee, she goes
through a period of frantic endeavor to re-
tain her youth; and even when time has
clutched her with too firm a hand to be
shaken off, and she begins to feel the in
tirmities which she still puts ont all
her strength to conceal, even then
she grasps at the departing shadow, and
fresh daubs the crumbling ruin, in the be-
lief that the worlds eyes are dim, and that
stucco may pass for marble for another
year or two longer. Or she becomes Bel
gravian mother, with daughters to sell to
the highest bidder; and then the aim of her
life is to secure the purchaser. Her daugh
ters are never objects of real love with the
fashionable woman. They are essentially
her rivals and the idea of carrying on her
life in theirs, of forgetting herself in them,
occurs to her only as forecast of DEATH
Even from her SONS she shrinks, rather than
not, as living evidences of the lapse of time
which she cannot deny, and awkward at
fixing dates; and there is not home pre-
sided over by fashionable woman where
the family is more than a mere name, a
mere social convention loosely held togeth-
er by circumstances, not by love.
Closing such life as this comes the un-
honored end when the miserable made-up
old creature totters down into the grave,
where paint and padding and glossy plaits
cut from some fresh young head, are of no
more avail; and where death, which makes
all things real, reduces her life of lies to
the nothingness it has been from the begin
ming What does she leave behind herr
A memory by which her children may order
their own lives, in proud assurance that so
they will order them best for virtue and for
honor? Or a memory which speaks to
them of time miSused, of duties unfulfilled,
of love discarded for pleasure, and of a life
long sacrifice of all things good and pure
the worldly old woman clinging to the last,
batlike, to the old roofs and rafters: and
we all know how heartily we despise her,
and how we ridicule her in our hearts, if
not by our words. If the reigning queens
of fashion, at present young and beautiful,
would but remember that they are only
that worldly old woman in embryo, and
in very few years they will be her exact
of the world once more to follow! The ira
ditional skeleton ut the feast had a Won
derfully wise meaning, crude and gross as
it was in form. For though its mensentO
mari, too constantly before us, would either
sadden or brutalize as we were thoughtful
or licentious, yet it is good to see the end
of ourselves, and to study the meaning and
lesson of our lives in those of our proto-
types and elder likenesscs. The pleasure
of the world are, as we all know, very
potent and very alluring, but nothing can
be more unsatisfying if taken as the main
purpose of life. While we are young the
mere stirring of the blood stands instead of
anything more real; but as we go on,
and the pulse flags, and pleasureable oc-
casions get rare and more rare, we find that
we have been like the prodigal son, and
that our food and his have been out of
much the same trough, and come in the
main to about the same thing. This is 4
time of extraordinary wealth and of cores
ponding extraordinary luxury. of unparal-
leled restlessness, which is not the same
thing as activity or energy but which dis
dams all quiet, all rcpose, as uncomfortable
stagnation; hence the fashionable woman
of the day is one of extremes in her own
line also, and the idleness, the heartlcss-
ness the sclf-indulgence, the want of high
morality, and the insolent luxury at all
times characteristic of her, We're never seen
displayed with more cynical etfrontery than
at present. and never called formorc severe
condemnation. The fashionable women of
Greece and Rome, and of the age of Louis
NV. have left be hind them names which
the world has made typical of the vices
naturally engendcred by idleness and lux
ury But do we wish that our women
should become subjects for an English
Juvenal and that fashion should create
race of Laises and Phrynes, out of the
stock which once gave us Lucy Hutchinson
and Elizabeth Fry? Once the name of
Englishwoman carried with it 4 grave and
noble echo, as the name of women known
for their gentle bearing and their blame
less honor,-of women who loved their lIus-
| hands and brought ND about their own