Within the last twenty-five years the wish to be considered a lady has spread so among all classes of American women as to have become almost ridiculous, as in the authentic case of the individual who presented herself at the front door of a fine house, and describing herself as an ash-lady, inquired for the woman of the house. It has been so often repeated that: "The rank is but the guinea's stamp," and that "A man's a man for a' that," that all the ash-ladies and wash-ladies of the land have hastily concluded that the term "lady" stands for nothing substantial.

I will not say that a washer-woman may not be a lady. It is certainly possible for her to have all the essentials of a lady. But such a case is so rare that I think we are justified in taking the contrary for granted till we have proof of the fact. Not there are washer-women so truthful, unselfish, and noble in character that they are far superior as women to many whom we may fairly call ladies. Such women usually have self-respect enough to understand that they lose rather than gain dignity in claiming to be anything they are not. The essential point in life is not the being considered a lady. It is not even to be a lady, though that is a beautiful thing. A woman is like a vigorous plant, with strong roots firmly fixed in the soil and abundant fresh green leaves. A lady is such a plant crowned by a beautiful blossom. You have sometimes seen a plant, a geranium, for instance, which had lost all its leaves, and yet bore at the top of its crooked stem a cluster of flowers. Such flowers are not very beautiful. The thrifty plant without a blossom is more beautiful. Of course my moral is this, that while the term "lady" does mean something different from "woman," it is only as a crown of womanhood that it is really significant.

Every girl should try to be a lady, however, and every girl who sincerely tries will have some measure of success. I remember when I was a girl, I once said to a high-bred woman, "Do you think, after all, that Mrs. A. is much of a lady?" She replied so firmly as to crush me for the time, "One is either a lady or she is not a lady." I supposed she was right, and that there were no stages on the perilous upward path which led to being a lady. I have changed my mind now. I think each of us may have some virtues without having all the virtues. I think with Emerson that in a society of gentlemen and ladies we shall find no complete gentleman and no complete lady; and so I say that every girl who tries to be a lady will have some measure of success. I do not mean that she should try to be recognized as a lady. If she is one she will probably, but not certainly, be so recognized. In a small community, where she can be known personally, she will be sure of her place, but not in a large town.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, speaking in England, said something to this effect: "You think we have no classes in America because we have no titles to distinguish them. But a barbed wire fence is as effectual in keeping out intruders as one of boards, though you can see the boards and the barbed wire is invisible."

Why is a barbed wire fence put up in America? Because there is a real difference between coarse people and refined people, even when both have the best intentions. To be sure there are other less valid reasons. There are coarse people whom accident has put among the higher classes, who make themselves ridiculous by putting up a fence between themselves and poorer people even when the poor are refined. Nevertheless, there is a true basis for distinction of classes. Only the distinction is not as sharp as many would have it. The highly refined and the very coarse have so little in common that they can never associate with comfort. But the highly refined do not need barbed wire between themselves and those with one degree less of cultivation. We can always reach one hand to those below us, and if we reach the other to those above us, we shall be able to lift the lower to our plane instead of sinking to theirs. Such a chain of love, reaching from the lowest to the highest, is the ideal society, and the highest man does not need to lift all his fellows up by his unaided strength, because there is infinite help above him.

But in the unideal present most of us will sometimes be called upon to stand outside the charmed circle of barbed wire which incloses more fortunate mortals, in spite of all we can do for ourselves. We may be better women than those within the circle, we may be better-educated, more careful in our habits, and our manners may be finer, and yet we may not have the magic word which would admit us. There is no doubt, for instance, that blood and breeding do tell powerfully in refinement. I can think of half a dozen women, however, of no birth at all in the ordinary sense, and of no home education, who have blossomed into the loveliest and most refined of women. In one case, the ancestors had for generations been earnestly religious, so that the girl was really of noble birth and predestined to refinement, though she had nothing to help her in the world's estimation. But some of the girls came from wretched homes, some of them did not even have good mothers, and one was the illegitimate daughter of a servant girl. But they all had aspiration and intellect, and their refinement was not only wonderful under the circumstances, but wonderful under any circumstances. They were suitable associates for the most exclusive ladies in our cities so far as genuine refinement goes, only as their experience of life was much wider than that of these carefully guarded dames, perhaps they would not have assimilated very well with them after all.

Of course, the exclusive circles are suspicious of women whose antecedents are like these, and perhaps they have a right to be suspicious, because these girls were certainly exceptions to the rule. At all events, none of us can help ourselves by grasping at a position. We may, to be sure, get invitations sometimes if we are vulgar enough to ask for them, but we shall find the barbed wire fence even in the drawing-room to which we have been admitted. We must be content to stand outside every circle till we are invited to enter it, and our self-respect must heal our wounded pride.

One thing, however, we can do. We can quietly resist being patronized. We are not often called upon to accept favors from those who are not our superiors but who condescend to us because we are poor or obscure. It is true we must be humble, and we need not resent such favors, but we must beware of being flattered by the notice of any one who is simply rich or powerful. When we recognize true superiority either in the rich or the poor, we ought to be glad to acknowledge it. We can accept a favor from those who are really above us, though we know we cannot return it. And we can always be ready to do our best work for others whether they slight us or not. That does not show a mean but a noble spirit.

What are the essentials of a lady?

A knowledge of the manners of the world is generally considered necessary if one would be a lady. Even where customs themselves are trivial, ignorance of them makes a woman awkward and self-conscious, so that she does not have the grace we associate with a perfect lady. Etiquette is superficial, it is true, but it has a genuine value. The manners which belong instinctively to a woman of kindness and refinement are a far better test of her real rank.

I think, on the whole, a lady is most quickly recognized by her purity. Even a pure enunciation is a sign of a lady, for it gives a certain beauty of speech rarely heard except among those not only carefully educated, but brought up among those who have the same habits. And nobody is quite willing to pronounce any one a lady who is not exquisitely neat in her personal habits. These, to be sure, are only an outward and visible sign, but they point clearly to something within. Somebody is sure to remember a class of New England housekeepers who spend all their time scrubbing floors and have no spirit left for anything else, and ask if they have the visible stamp of a lady. The idea of neatness is so distorted in them that we cannot admire it very much, yet perhaps it is their one connecting link with refinement. Such women, however, are, curiously enough, seldom particularly neat in their personal habits. Their dress is often untidy, their hair uncombed, they are careless about bathing, and their teeth are neglected. Personal neatness is far more characteristic of a lady than neatness of surroundings, and cleanliness is better than order. The lover of "Shirley" says, "I have often seen her with a torn sleeve, but the arm beneath it was white."

Somebody else will say that neatness is, after all, a luxury beyond the means of poor people. How can you be clean when you do dirty work? It takes either time or money. I know a wealthy lady who used to be poor, who says that for years she could never afford as much washing as she thought indispensable, and she was too much of an invalid to do her own washing. Nevertheless, she was always a lady and always looked like one, though her dresses were sometimes absurdly old-fashioned. I should say that her love of neatness was so strong that she sacrificed less important things to it, and always did reach a high standard, though not the standard of luxury.

I know a gentleman whose lot has been to do the heaviest and dirtiest work on a ranch for years, and yet his hands to the tips of his fingernails look as if he had just come from a manicure's. I suppose he has been determined that his hands should be clean and has been willing to take the trouble to keep them so. Still, we ought to make some allowance for poverty in our estimate of neatness. "Why are you building an addition to your house?" asked one lady of another. "Oh, for Mr. B.'s tooth-brushes," replied Mrs. B, carelessly. "When a man has been brought up as Mr. B. has been, his tooth-brushes take up a great deal of room."

I have said all this of outward purity, because it is easier to speak of this, but it is still more the purity of mind and character which distinguishes a lady. In some classes of society even in America girls are kept almost isolated chiefly to preserve their purity of thought. Purity, even the purity of ignorance, is beautiful, but such purity has not deep foundations, and I cannot think that girls are best guarded in this way. Nevertheless, purity is so essential to a lady that such girls will always be counted as ladies.

The love of beauty is characteristic of a real lady. This is recognized in some measure. Girls are taught dancing and music and something of art. They listen to good music even if they are not musicians, and they look at good pictures if they cannot paint them. This is partly a matter of fashion, but it has a genuine root. And so with the beauty of dress, and of the home. Both these ought to be beautiful, but as few women are artistic enough to design anything, they follow the fashion. In this way they escape criticism from their companions who are like them. But the moment ugly dress or furniture is out of fashion its ugliness is apparent. I suppose most of us must be content to be tyrannized over more or less by fashion, or by fashion and poverty combined, till we develop greater genius in working out the problem of how to make our surroundings beautiful. I would simply suggest that we should resist fashions we know to be hideous, and try to follow those which commend themselves to our sense of beauty.

The two forms of beauty which are free to all of us are, I think, most neglected, and more neglected among those who are surest of their title as ladies than among those of more modest pretensions. These are poetry and nature. To read beautiful poems constantly and to learn them by heart, and to look out day by day on the glory of the world—these things give higher refinement than can be won by anything else merely intellectual. And such a love of beauty usually has deep springs in the moral nature.

Education has so much to do with refinement that we expect a lady to be educated as a matter of course, at least in some directions, mathematics and science being thus far not included. George Eliot says of Nancy in "Silas Marner," that she often used ungrammatical language, and was not highly educated, but that she was a thorough lady because she had delicate personal habits and high rectitude.

This brings us to the deep foundations. A lady must be truthful. And the outward marks of truthfulness are sometimes recognized when their source is misunderstood. The lady wears real lace instead of a showy imitation. If she cannot afford what is real, she goes without. She is as careful about neat underclothing as neat dress. She does not pretend to accomplishments she has not. Indeed, the modesty essential to a lady is intimately connected with truthfulness. When she is wrong she does not think it beneath her dignity to own it. She never allows blame which belongs to her to fall on any one else. She makes no display. She wishes to be loved for herself and not because she belongs to the "best set," so she does not take pains to introduce the names of great acquaintances into her conversation. And of course she always tells the truth. She may observe all these things simply because it is good form, but a truthful woman will observe them without knowing they are good form, and she will be the real lady.

But one may have all the qualities we have enumerated and yet miss the charm we associate with the name "lady." A truthful person may not be kind. A woman may love beauty and still be hard. A perfectly pure woman may be unfeeling, perhaps all the more because she needs no charity herself. But a woman who does not show consideration for others cannot be an ideal lady. If she is considerate in a mechanical way, because she knows a lady must be so, it does not amount to much. And some women do all they can for others from a sense of duty. They study to make others happy in even trivial ways. They are good women, and on the whole—ladies. But the woman whose love for others is spontaneous, who sheds the radiance of kindness about her because she cannot help it—she is the lovely lady whose charm we all feel. Truth and love are the eternal foundations of the character of a real lady.