is just about as mischievous as the perpetration of the wrong. It is
vacillation, hesitation, lack of will, feebleness of purpose, imperfect
execution, that works ill in all life. Be monarch of all you survey. If a
woman decides to do her own housework, let her go in royally among her
pots and kettles and set everything a-stewing and baking and broiling and
boiling, as a queen might. If she decides not to do housework, but to
superintend its doing, let her say to her servant, "Go," and he goeth, to
another, "Come," and he cometh, to a third, "Do this," and he doeth it,
and not potter about. So, when girls get themselves up and go to Saratoga
for a regular campaign, I want their bearing to be soldierly. Let them be
gay with abandonment. Let them take hold of it as if they liked it. I do
not affect the word flirtation, but the thing itself is not half so
criminal as one would think from the animadversions visited upon it. Of
course, a deliberate setting yourself to work to make some one fall in
love with you, for the mere purpose of showing your power, is
abominable,--or would be, if anybody ever did it; but I do not suppose it
ever was done, except in fifth-rate novels. What I mean is, that it is
entertaining, harmless, and beneficial for young people to amuse
themselves with each other to the top of their bent, if their bent is a
natural and right one. A few hearts may suffer accidental, transient
injury; but hearts are like limbs, all the stronger for being broken.
Besides, where one man or woman is injured by loving too much, nine
hundred and ninety-nine die the death from not loving enough.

But these Saratoga girls did neither one thing nor another. They dressed
themselves in their best, making a point of it, and failed. They assembled
themselves together of set purpose to be lively, and they were
infectiously dismal. They did not dress well: one looked rustic; another
was dowdyish; a third was over-fine; a fourth was insignificant. Their
bearing was not good, in the main. They danced, and whispered, and