 effort was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that
the moral and religious mind could contemplate with edification. The glaring
insincerity of these sermons was not sufficient to compass the banishment of the
fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient to-day; it never will be
sufficient while the world stands, perhaps. There is no school in all our land
where the young ladies do not feel obliged to close their compositions with a
sermon; and you will find that the sermon of the most frivolous and least
religious girl in the school is always the longest and the most relentlessly
pious. But enough of this. Homely truth is unpalatable.
    Let us return to the Examination. The first composition that was read was
one entitled »Is this, then, Life?« Perhaps the reader can endure an extract
from it:
 
        »In the common walks of life, with what delightful emotions does the
        youthful mind look forward to some anticipated scene of festivity!
        Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy, the
        voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the festive throng, the
        observed of all observers. Her graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes, is
        whirling through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is brightest,
        her step is lightest in the gay assembly.
            In such delicious fancies time quickly glides by, and the welcome
        hour arrives for her entrance into the elysian world, of which she has
        had such bright dreams. How fairy-like does every thing appear to her
        enchanted vision! each new scene is more charming than the last. But
        after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all is
        vanity: the flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates harshly
        upon her ear; the ball-room has lost its charms; and with wasted health
        and imbittered heart, she turns away with the conviction that earthly
        pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul!«
 
And so forth and so on. There was a buzz of gratification from time to time
during the reading, accompanied by whispered ejaculations of »How sweet!« »How
eloquent!« »So true!« etc., and after the thing had closed with a peculiarly
afflicting sermon the applause was enthusiastic.
    Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the interesting paleness
that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a poem. Two stanzas of it will do:
 

                    A Missouri Maiden's Farewell to Alabama.

Alabama, good-bye! I love thee well!
But yet for awhile do I leave thee now!
Sad, yes, sad thoughts of
