THE FINE PART OF A LADY NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1887. Tand lay the foundation for white in taxe will be the tradition sympathy with one's fellow-beings? Many a joke of depression, time of its period, but neither fashion, custom, nor sentiment can alter the elements which in a woman's nature qualify her to perform that finest part in life which is a lady's, using the term in its most ennobling sense. We recognize her in every century and under all circumstances; we know her by her sense of the fitness of things and her instinctive good-breeding, whether she wears the dress of Queen Esther, the garb of Ruth during her days of "sweet following," of an Eliza beth, Queen of Hungary, the sober colors of an Elizabeth Fry, or the cornette of a Soeur Rosalie; and we know her as promptly and as surely when we meet her in unheroic fashion, or undistinguished by any of the loftier virtues and abilities which marked those women of abiding name; we know her, whatever her dress or rank, when she smiles genially as she performs some kindly service for a stranger, when she seeks out the forgotten or depressed member of a company to give him good cheer, when she bestows a favor, and, above all, when she accepts one; and if she be all her title should imply, then, rich or poor, high or low, does she right royally deserve to have those familiar lines apply to her A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command." Fashion may adorn her outwardly, add to her natural graces some external charm, but it nev er can enslave her, because primarily, essentially, instinctively, she is natural. There seems to be in the minds of most young this. Noblesse oblige, say we. The true woman's part in life is to Fig. 1.-PLUSH COAT.-FRONT.-[For Back, see Page 761.] Standing hour after hour at her receptions, the first lady in our land has won all hearts by the uniformity of her kindliness, for every one the genial look and pleasant word, for each outstretched hand the same kindly pressure; and there need be no hypocrisy in Fig. 2.-VICUÑA CLOTH COSTUME. TEN CENTS A COPY. WITH A SUPPLEMENT. stances, a lady will remember her guest or guests first, and if she does not, Spanish fashion, lay her house and all her personal property at his or her feet, she must lay there her sympathies, her quickest comprehension, her most genial manner, and the kindest impulses of her heart-must, that is, if she does her part, and must. most certainly, if she desires the best kind of popularity. She must remember that in this world no two people are alike, and from no two can we expect just the same amount of good-humor, alertness, delicacy, or, to be general, savoir-faire; but all these deficiencies in some can be made up by the large-hearted kindliness which distinguishes others, and this our ideal lady must have. Fig. 3.-TUFTED WOOL MANTLE.-[For pattern anything, from a downright insult to an intimation that one is And another element in that fine, sweet composition of hers-that thing called "temperament,' which is really native kindness and truth-is to be above suspecting others of mean motives, or to be the cause of spreading a scandal. A lady's part shuts all this out. She cannot, it is true, be foolishly credulous or sympathetic, but she can be, nay, she must be, temperate, merciful, and just, and if by her means one scandal ceases, one human being is raised from a cloud of misapprehension, her part has not been an idle or a thankless one, and in pronouncing other hearts and lives clear, she purifies and strengthens her own. There are downright practical bits of "business" for her, too. She has, or ought to have, a kingdom within herself, out of which she brings order and comfort and propriety to those about her. Before all things she should seek to keep her "house in order," letting charitable enterprises that demand executive talent take only the overflow of her abilities. Her place is among her own, and to them are her first and freshest moments owing. But there is a current of actual charitable work through all this broader stream of domestic life, whether it flows in tiny channels, sending only words and looks rippling across its surface, or broadens with some good impressive and encouraging example. We have known women undertaking this fine part of a lady who could not treat well those whom they employed for money. Such a one engages a governess for her children. Straightway the fact of their relative positions gives the employer a sense that the other woman must be an inferior. "It is only the governess," she will say, forgetting that she ought not to place her children under the educational care and influence of a woman she regards as beneath her and them. "Those sort of people are this, that, and the other," will this sham aristocrat say, relegating the paid teacher to a lower stratum where sensitive. ness is unknown. On the other hand, the employée who is not instinct ively a lady flounders about helplessly in her position of hireling. She expects slights, consequently receives them. She lacks tact and a large-minded simple graciousness, such as belong to the lady, no matter what her position, and accordingly she considers a sort of resentful hauteur the equivalent for good manners, the shutting up of her sweetest sympathies the most dignified attitude, while she resents what is often meant for kindliness on her employer's part as patronage, thereby losing the chance of creating that most desirable of all gifts of the gods, a true friend. Volumes might be written on the same subject, yet after all the thing resolves itself into something very simple. Whether you wear cloths shown in this illustration, one of plain cream-colored linen with graceful corner designs embroidered in long stitch, the other of linen damask with a canvas-woven border in which a conventional border design is worked in cross stitch with colored Harris (linen) embroidery thread. The fullsized outline design for Fig. 1 is given in Fig. 58 on the pattern-sheet Supplement. The en tire design is out- Fig. 3.-TAILOR DRESS.-BACK.-[See Fig. 4.] HILE alco holic stimulants have been given more largely to the use of the masculine portion of our race, the feminine portion has contented itself with tea, and has had to undergo a good deal of reviling, and of assurance that there is death in the pot, in consequence. It is told them that tea is only to be had in an adulterated condition; that it is dyed, and poisoned, and made over from the tea leaves of the original drinkers. As yet all this has made no difference with the women who depend upon the herb. They will not believe that all the tea grown on all the miles of the Chinese tea farms has to be adul terated, or that enough is used there to make its redrying and coloring worth while. It is told them also that it produces painful excitement and wakefulness, when taken in quantity, from which comes painful reaction, that it acts like tannin in the stomach, that it produces theismwhatever that production may beand that the professional tea-taster, who does not even swallow the tea he tastes, is always sooner or later ruined physically by |