TO-DAY AND FIFTY YEARS AGO.

BY

MRS. HENRY WARD BEECHER.

IFTY years ago there

would have been no difficulty in defining the distinctive marks of really good manners, morals, and also the peculiar talents or accomplishments demanded of those who would claim the character of "perfect ladies and perfect genartlemen." This is an expression frequently

employed, but each time with widely different signification, if one may judge by the varied characters to whom it is applied. Sometimes it is the dress, sometimes it is the deportment, and sometimes the position of the individual, which has been the potent cause which directed that expression, "a perfect lady." But fifty years in this progressive age have greatly changed definitions of many things, and nowhere does one find the change more remarkable than in the strangely modified laws that are supposed to govern the rules and habits of society.

It is quite bewildering to observe the license in speech and behavior permitted among many whose position, either inherited or wrought out by patient industry, places them among

the leaders in all that one naturally expects to find refined, intellectual, elegant or fashionable. In the steady advance of time and thought, one must recognize many admirable and beneficial changes; but we can not believe that the great revolution in deportment and conversation, now so noticeable among many where we should least expect it, can conduce to the richest growth in high moral and intellectual development for our young people. Very soon they must take the places of their elders in honest endeavors to place our fair country where every true patriot ardently desires and believes she will stand-among the foremost people on earth. Are our pros pects encouraging? Can they be if those now rapidly approaching the line which separates youth from maturity are not more carefully guarded and restrained? But if our children go astray and are content to live only for pleasure and amusement, growing into manhood and womanhood with no aspirations for anything higher, will not the parents, and especially the mothers, be held, in no small degree, responsible for those wasted, frivolous lives?

One sees many women, most truly dignified, lovely and refined, modest and gentle in their manners, and faithfully trying to lead their children tenderly in the same way they endeavor to pursue themselves; such are accepted, without a moment's criticism, as perfect ladies. But we also meet

mothers who have all the natural gifts and graces of true womanhood that the most fastidious could require, but the voices of fashion and pleasure have so blunted their finer feelings that modesty and delicacy seem to them as obsolete ideas, relics of the past ages. They are seen at fashionable assemblies and entertainments, with bare arms, neck and shoulders, very bare. It is impossible for a truly modest woman to remain unabashed in their presence and see young men, in the extreme of absurd fashion (the latest discovery, a

dude, we think), stand by them, lavishing upon them silly compliments or extravagant flattery; and, worst of all, to find these women who, if fully attired, one would expect to find dignified and queenly in deportment, receive their gross and disgusting badinage with a simper and toss of the head, and replying in the all too common slang, "Oh, get out!" "None of your nonsense!" "Shut up now!" This is no exagger ation, and those who allow such low familiarities are wives and mothers who will tell you that they do not care for balls, have no taste for parties, but deny themselves to chaperon their daughters. "Chaperon, to attend, to protect in public" is Webster's definition of that word. What hopes for the future can we have for daughters thus protected? All the delicacy and sweetness of fresh, modest girlhood must wither in such an atmosphere.

In young men and maidens, loud talking and boisterous laughter, emphasized by coarse expletives that were once never known out of the stable, race-course, or gambling den, or among the coarse, untutored gamins of the streets, now pass unnoticed or unrebuked at the table, in the drawing-room or stylish entertainment. Fulsome compliments, uttered in the free and easy tones that a genuine lady would resent as an insult, are often answered by rude raillery and repartee, in quite unlike the gentle and refined tones that one expects to hear from rosy lips.

If, “as guard and protector," a mother take her daughters into the bewitching circles of fashionable society and in their presence accept frivolous speeches and rude familiarities, with no sign of reproof or disapprobation, but encourage such familiarities by replying in the same tone, like a hoydenish girl, can she expect that they will demean themselves with such dignity and refinement that no man will dare approach them but with respect and reverence? Can she be surprised if her sons and