The ball-dresses are the garments which try a girl more than anything, the tulle skirts and pretty flounces, which cost so much, getting so soon spoiled and messed; and I think the stock of the first season’s dresses must be helped considerably by the parents, else will the poor girl feel herself worse dressed than anyone else; and that is a small misery that should never be allowed if in any measure it can be avoided. The years from eighteen to twenty-one are undoubtedly the most joyous of any a woman ever has. They are not always the happiest, taking our standard of happiness very high, but they are the brightest, sunniest, and most amusing that the average girl will ever have, more especially if she have been carefully brought up in a good atmosphere and be not tormented with those uncomfortable religious doubts and miserable hankerings after a career and after reforming the world we some of us had such a severe attack of at that age. I personally would not be eighteen again for all the wealth of the Indies. Then, I thought it extremely grand to believe in nothing, to have a gloomy satisfaction in my superior mind, which soared above the old beliefs, and formed a misty religion of my own, which meant nothing and led nowhere, and to indulge in dreadful sarcasms--mentally only (I am thankful to say I did not often utter them)--on the worldly wisdom of those folks who naturally wished their daughters to marry well and turned cold shoulders on the poorest and generally most undeserving of suitors, and I used to stay up until the small hours of the morning (although I was dreadfully sleepy) inditing the most awful verses against the rich and titled folks, whom I naturally thought were fattening on the poor and miserable, and to whom I intended to go on a species of socialistic crusade; and finally in writing a big novel, which used to make me feel very much more intellectual than most of the people I mixed with, and which, after an evening spent among the brightest and first intellects in the world, I used to contemplate savagely, having been made to feel very small, though I would have died rather than confess such a thing--a feeling I did not mean ever to experience again, once that _magnum opus_ was given to the world and people really knew me for the genius I was. Alas! that recognition has never come yet; still, I am very happy without it, and am always doubly thankful my days of craving for worldwide fame have vanished, and that I neither want that nor to believe in anything any more.