New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1860-09-10
written for the New Orleans Crescent
OUR IRL.
ny NAgrEN n. DOWNS.

in the ark; may have washed Noah's dishes OF
MIXED Methusalehs COW. She may have run
through her first edition on the summit OF Mount
Ararat, and reappeared, g revised and corrected,
to assist in gathering up the fragments 81 thateast
which filled seven baskets. She may be loose
leaf from some work originated IN the years Pc
yond the flood !; she may be the dim outline OF some
project, intended to create perfect treasures, .
which never grew to perfection with ifs author.
She may have been born before poor Mrs. Lot be-
came seasoning for pork and beans or she may
have been ushered into this land Of the living by
the last Liverpool steamer. There is at all events
but little difference in her appearance at the differ
ent times we take her p-sometimes little leaner
or little tleshier-a little genteel little
more shabby; sometimes bound in CLOTH some
times in "half ealf;' and always, like the popular
serials furnished by our fashionable magazines, "to
be continued :" for an indefinite period.
1t is supposed that conservative and legislative
powers govern the nation. It may seem so to
/ men-to ofice.seekers, politicians, and would-be
Presidents. Women know better. The real ruler,
the Lycurges of the land is Our Girl" If she
chance to be the cook, heaven only knows how
many justifabe life takers she may have con-
demned to death, or how many hardened criminals
she may have pardoned The organs which
digest dinner have great influence upon the di-
gestion of justice; and the judge who assumes the
4 black cap and reads in tones of solemn awe the
soul of his fellow-creature into that everlasting
torment which he believes awaits him at the other
end of that hempen cord which breaks his mortal
neck; the preacher, who, in his afternoon sermon,
when the sunbeams slant through the stained glass
windows and stretch over his congregation like
the shining arms of angels, tells us of the g land
air of belief which carries conviction with it, that
through faith we shall find salvation; the speaker
whose last flight of rhetoric and reasoning
drought down the house, and he whose base
insinuatons" led to ten PAGES and Colts reyolyers,
| all and each of them are, as it were, but the
mouth-piece of Our Girl They deny it in
dgnantly Perfectly natural that they should:
but the fact is none the less positive: the round
| of beef, the untimely pickle, the joint done to
| turn, and the making of the cup which cheers
but not inebriates, these are the agents through
| which sour Girl goes out into high places and
/ addresses the multitude, e.5-
| She may occupy sphere bounded by the doors
| of the dining room but far beyond its oaken pan
nels its polished windows, its private pantres and
| its extension table, does her influence extend.
Had that crash of china which you heard last even
ing in the very midst of that pleasant reunion that
/ crash which the cultured hostess did not even
seem to hear, anything to do with that dark frown
upon the forehead of the mistress, she takes her
seat at breakfast this morning, and speaks to her
| children as if they belonged to else, who
had sent them at an inopportune moment to visit
her /; and to her husband with sharpness which
indicates broken glass between her teeth2 Had it
anything to do with the husbands feeling cut
and going forth aggrieved, and casting his vote on
Z" the other side of the question: which now
glores in its majority Of one-that little pebble in
| the stream whose circles shall go on widening and
| widening over illimitable space?" Does not the
| ghost of that antique glass goblet which was re-
duced to vulgar fractions last night, and which no
money can replace, multiply our girl just SO many
times as the many fragments would go to making
up one goblet? Does it not keep gliding up infront
of that tricky nag known as the household MENACE,
causing it to curvet and prance to the right and the
49,, Hic5a4e..-es
dren, and running away with the husband?
Doesn't everything go wrong-are not the Mon
days tinged with tapis 5aztli and the Saturday
nights moistened with mops and scrub-brushes, and
isn't feeling of being pinstuck and Pinched pre-
vaent in the family, which, in the witching times
old Salem wots Of, would have seen something
pumped into the nearest stream to sink or SWIM
survive or perish,n unaccountably resembling our
girl? And doesn't that individual, socially re-
garded as quite down stairs in the equality point of
view, use her weekly stipend, that inffnitessimal
fraction of your weekly income, as pair of ster.
ling stilts mounted upon which she holds her head
higher than the head of the family, moving about
with spirit of independence you have never yet
acquired yourself in the house you call your home?
And doesn't she finally walk out of it with the ut
most sang fioid, just you have brought yourself
to the spirit of humiliation exaeted from you by
this high priest of the household, our girl?
Is she not the staple product Of every State in
our Union, never ruined by rains or destroyed by
drought? Does she not stand with her heels on
our heads, her hand in our loaf, her tooth in our
treasury? Is she not the topic inexhaustible at
every social gathering, at street corners and in
market places? Does she not rear her hydra head
among our roses as well in the midst of our cab.
bages? Does she not secretly scent her handker-
chief at our toilette table? Do we not feel bound
to openly admire the lit of her elegant kids on
holydays without betraYing the secret thatwe have
missed our own! Do we not adrotly conceal the
chagrin we experience when, after having once
seen our wife or our daughter wear her love of a
bonnet, the chef dRaure Of some Partisan modste,
we behold its counterpart, gotten up by some
country millner, next Sunday on the tossing head
| of our girl
/ Behold her influence upon conversation. Be.
meath the brilliant chandelier she works like
worm in brains, which have bent over abstruse
sciences and reveled in the rich recreations of
bellies lettres and the arts. The rosy red lip which
seems formed only as a gateway for sweet smiles
and words of affection; the eye of clear and intel
lectual depth, the cheek of beauty and the charm
of refined manners all are but harpstrngs vibrat-
| ing to the touch of our girl. 1t is note high up
among the ledger lines of woman life; and once
struck, becomes an endless scale running through
| the gamut of talk till intrusion or interruption
closes the instrument with bang, or demands
some other strain. She is piano which no wo-
man refuses to play. Let the well thumbed keys
but show themselves, and no "hoarseness,' no
cold, u no excuse, whatever, is found for leaving
the revolving stool vacant and there are plenty
to gather round at to turn the leaves and
render every assistance to the player. Our
GIRL, in fact, is rarely solo, she is oftener
"quartette,' quintete, sextant, if such, with
crotchets, with trills with shakes, with quavers
semiquayers and demisemiquavers, ad lihitum.
Poesy, politics, sentiment and religion hide their