Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[17]

IV. the woman of influence.

Mr.Worth, the eminent Paris dress-maker, telegraphs to the Boston Sunday Herald that the great and pressing need of the age is a Woman of Influence, somewhere or other, to set the fashions. In default of this, he has, after exhausting his genius upon a new dress, to use various indirect devices to bring it into vogue. If one thinks what a beautiful work of art a lady's dress may be, when wealth and Worth have done their best for it, and what an appalling product mere wealth without taste can develop under that name, one may well give a sigh of sympathy to this man of genius who can find no woman quite worthy of his scissors. Yet the truth is that the Woman of Influence is demanded not alone to wear clothes, but to modify and control all the habits of society. A person of power, of individuality, of resources, of charm, is needed in every place where a woman stands, and is not to be had in answer to an advertisement. “What we want,” said a certain school committee-man, after a long debate in our committee about the best way to secure