bills prevented young men from marrying, and so left fifteen hundred thousand girls without husbands!  The great dress-makers of those days were Madame Eloffe, the artist who dressed Marie Antoinette, and whose account-books have recently been published; with notes and curious colored plates, by the Comte de Reiset, and Madame Cafaxe, the modiste-couturiere of the Fauburg St.-Honore, celebrated for her exorbitant charges.  One has only to consult the curious historical researches of the brothers De Goncourt in order to appreciate the luxury and extravagance of the past century.  Imagine that in the wedding-trousseau of Mademoiselle Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau there figured twelve blonde wigs, varying in shade from flax to gold!  Madame Tallien alone possessed thirty of these wigs, each of which was valued at that time at one hundred dollars,—­that is to say, some two hundred dollars of modern money.  None of our modern elegantes would ever think of buying six thousand dollars’ worth of false hair.  At the same epoch the ladies who had fallen in love with Greek and Roman fashions had abandoned the old-fashioned shoe in order to adopt the cothurnus; and Coppe, the chic shoemaker, or corthurnier, of Paris charged sixty dollars a pair for his imitation antique sandals, with their straps.  Alas!  Coppe’s sandals were no more durable than the fleeting rose, and whenever a fair dame came to show her torn cothurnus to the great Coppe he replied sadly, “The evil is irremediable:  madame has been walking!”

THEODORE CHILD.

* * * * *

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A Future for Women.

From the last report of the Bureau of Education it appears that twice as many girls as boys enter high schools in the United States, and that three times as many complete the four years’ course.  “Nature,” in commenting upon this fact, attributes it to the great attractiveness of commercial pursuits in this country, and the consequent eagerness of boys to enter upon them at as early an age as possible.  This is doubtless the true reason, and the disproportion is more likely to increase than to diminish, even though the actual number of boys who rush into a money-making career as soon as they have mastered the arithmetic necessary for it may be growing smaller.  It is beginning, moreover, to be an every-day matter for women to receive a college education.  There are already three well-filled colleges of high rank exclusively their own, and the new Bryn Mawr bids fair to be a powerful rival to Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley.  Many of the colleges for men are open to them; now, and the capitulation of those strongholds of conservatism.  Cambridge.  New Haven, and Baltimore, is only a question of time.  Great colleges are ravenous for fresh endowments, and the offer of a large sum of money may at any moment procure from them the full admission of women.  It is not impossible that before many years have passed there will be as many women as men receiving a college education.  How is this army of educated women going to occupy itself?