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there is a Son of St. George in the family, there can also be a Daughter of St. George; if there is a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, there is a Woman's Relief Corps, consisting of those who do the duty of peaceful vivandieres for those worthy veterans.
I beg that I may not be understood as speaking with any disrespect of these various bodies, of which, it must be confessed, I know very little.
It is probable that they do much good, first through the practice of charity, and again as an education in mutual courtesy and self-control.
All that is to be feared from them, for men or women, is the possibility of excess.
A dinner is a good thing, but half a dozen dinners a day would land a person in the hospital.
A social club or a benefit club is an admirable thing, but a man or a woman cannot by any possibility belong to half a dozen without peril.
More money will go into them than will ever come out of them, and the expenditure of time will be something tremendous.
Women especially, to whom such things are new, will be more endangered than men, because they will be more conscientious and punctilious.
On any “Social Register” you will see the name of a rich man with eight or ten clubs following after it; he perhaps frequents
New York, Harper and Brothers, 1897.
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