Jeffersonian Republican. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1840-1853, 1849-11-15
Fashionable Girls.

Mrs Swisshelm, of the Pttsburg Sunday VlSi
ter, one OF the pleasantest and most original wri.
tiers of the age, gives the following matter of-fac
information in one of her admirable letters to
country girls:'
There are hundreds of girls in every large city,
who parade the steefs in feathers, flowers, silks
anG laces, whose hands are soft and white as USE
lessness can make them, whose mothers keep
boarders to get living for their idle daughters.
These mothers will cook sweep, wait on tables,
carry loads of fmarketing, do the most menial druid
gerry toll late and early with very little more cloth
ing than would be allowed to Southern slave,
while their hopeful daughters spend their morn
ings lounging in bed, reading some silly book,
taking lessons in music and French, fixing fnery
and the like. The evenings are devoted to dress
ing, displaying their charms and accomplishments
to the best advantage for the wonderment and
admiration of knights of the yard-stick an young
aspirants for professional honors-doctors without
patients, lawyers without clients---who are as
brainless and souess as themselves. After a
while the piano sounding simpeton captivates the
tape e-measuring, law-expounding, or pill making
simpleton--The two ninnes spend every cent
that can be raised by hook crook-get all that
can be got on credit in broad cloth, satin, flowers
lace, carriage attendance, 3c.-hang their empty
pockets on somebody's chair, lay their empty
heads on somebody's pillow, and commence their
empty life with no other prospect than living at
somebody's expense-with no higher purpose than
living genteely and spiting the neighbors. This
is synopsis of the lives of thousands of street and
L h.1la IF chin
costume YOU have envived from passing glance.
Thousands of women in cities dress elegantly on
the streets, who have not a su1iciency of whole
some food, comfortable bed, or fire enough to-
warm their rooms.
once boarded in 'genteel boarding house in (
Huntsville There were two young ladies' and al
piano in the house: hall and parors handsomely
furnished The eldest young lady, The belle, wore
a summer bonnet at ten dollars; silk and blond
concern that could not last more than two or three
months; silk and satin dresses at two. or tnfeef
and four dollars per yard, and five dollars piece
for making them. and the entire family, women,
boys and babies, nine in ali, slept In one small
room with two dirty bags of pine shavIngs, two
straw holsters and three dirty quilts for bedding;
no Slips and there on the wall hung the peagreenl
and white satin, the rich silk and lawn dresses
These ladies did not work, but played The piano,
accordion and cards; and nearly broke their hearts
the week before we were there, because another
who presume lived just as they did, called on
them with great clumsy gold chain on her neck
None of them had one, and Miss. Labalinda the
BELLE could eat no supper, and had bad ut OF the
sulks to console her for the want of chain -
But, dear me. had no notion Of running away
off here. 4 was just thinking how busy you ooon-
try girls apt to be in the fall, and This led me
TO think what blessing it is that you5haye some
think to do, and that you think il disgrace 70 1--we
idly 1t is great blessing to live in. a country
where il is credit 10 work, for idieness IS the