efforts, were complete failures. They nibbled about on the outer edge;
finally, it dawned upon her to play some decided role. She determined to
be an æsthete. She built a house accordingly; she dressed accordingly;
and she acted, but above all, she talked accordingly. Thanks to her
wandering brother, an ideal American adventurer, she obtained from
London, far ahead of the general importation, a complete outfit of
Lilies, Languors, Yearnings, Reachings-out, Poppies, Wasted Passions,
Platonics, Heart-throbs, and all the more lately approved instruments of
æsthetic torture. Her establishment was ready. She wanted recognition.
She waited for an opportune moment. It came. Oscar Wilde, the apostle
in chief of the æsthetic school, reached our shores. He brought a letter
of introduction "To the one æsthete in all America, Mrs. Babbington
Brooks." On his arrival he sent her this letter, and with it a note,
written in a full, round hand, stating that he would be at her service
after his lecture in her town, on the eighteenth of the coming February,
and, being it was she, his terms were only three hundred dollars; usual
price, five hundred. She wired an eager acceptance of his generous
offer, and at once set her household in readiness. She invited the
town--the fashionable, so-called desirable portion of it--and waited the
issue. Her gilded net was well spread; her bait irresistible. She easily
caught them all, large and small; her house was crowded; her effort a
recognized masterpiece. Mamma says she could have readily made
arrangements with Oscar Wilde for a season in London--a female æsthete,
and from the crude land of America! Now, she is actually quite the rage!
Her triumph is now complete; her following large, composed of a batch of
deluded fools, caught by the glamour and the blow of brazen trumpets,
with just the _tincture_ of an artistic principle.

A large amount of money was spent on my educational training, both at
home and abroad. A young woman who can play a little, sing in fairly