The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-11-27
OLD GIRLS.

IL IS a little dlfflcuit to dsentangle the varied
influences which tell on ourselves and on the
world in which we live, and still harder, perhaps,
to sort them when fairly disentangled in any def
mite order of value, but we are inclined on the
whole 10 think that the most powerful of our So
cisl influences is that Of the Old Girl. Husbands
and wives, old men and maidens, tell of course in
some way on the general mass of thoughts and
impulses, of lives and characters, around them !;
but their action Is from the very nature of their
domestic position, their personal aims, and their
business distractions limited and Indirect With
out home, without the ties of family, unfet-
tered at least by matrimonial aims relieved by
genteel competence from the cares of business, the
Old Girl, on the other hand, bears down upon lite
with singleness OF aim and directness of pur-
pose which bids one expect great things. And
no doubt the Old Girl has done great things
She has built Bath. She has created Upper.
She has invented the popular preacher. The
sensational novel arose at her call. The
unwrlten code of feminir e society is monument
of her Hesitation. Patonic affection is the high.
est reach of her fancy. She has taken Evangeli-
calism captive, and darns at it through month
of Exeter Hall. She has seized Ritualism and
dragged smooth-shaven directors TO the feet Of
their Mother Superior" And, but the other
day, she took the form of Miss Becker, and, with
q wild slogan of "Womsn's Rights,n drove q
host of bsrrsters like chat before the wind. II
Is impossible to pass with the usual smile OF good
humored contempt before force such as this;
we long iDstinctively to know more about II, to
EXAMINE It's NdIlOuS tltmtute, 10 WAUGH IL III ltb
origin, its developments, its end. There is wide
gulf, we see at once, between the Old Girl and
the Fading Flower. The feverish mobility, the
balfdespairing yet passionate desire to attract,
the strange medley of poetry and prose, Of senti-
ment and wordlness, that amused rs In the earlier
stage, is gone. Like has fairly settled down into
q Icalm monotony. The Old Girl looks out
over the level sands of existence as the colossal
forms of Egyptian sculpture look over the desert.
with the same grand immobility, with patience of
A. ha& 1~.n Asxfna Hi.
faint echo, indeed, of the passions of the past,
ripples up every now and then to die at her feet.
Sometimes there is q lover, old as herself, dying
down she dies into the peace and rest of things,
yet jostliDg against her at intervals to wake the
old memories. to renew the old offers. And
then the voice and the look and the touch will
bring about slight attack of la seconde jeu.
nesse," dim trouble Of heart, a pleasant quick.
ening of pulse, a tear, headache. ere they pass
away. But they do pass away. Year after year,
it may be, the appeal is renewed, and the pulse
quickens, and the tear drops, but the old girl re.
mains an old girl still. She muses. over 1t some
times in moments of renewed calm, and won
ders how IL all can be. There was time, she
owns, when the very uncertainty was pleasant,
when the mere freedom OF choice was delight.
full, when there WAS strange sense OF power
in having lover at her feet, In the faith that,
though rejected, year would bring him 10 the
same fees again. He ia there still, but the old
pleasure is gone. She recalls, with a strange be-
wilderment Of heart. how near she has been more
than once to that impossible " Yes near
enough 10 devise little plots for the discovery
whether she were loved for her own loves sake
and how the little plots all proved her wooer
true, and how the "Yesr remained impossible
still. Again and again she has brought herself to
tie brink, and has peeped over and run away.
She cannot conquer this trouble, this panic, this
overpowering dismay at the thought Of change.
Life has fixed her 10 its grooves, has settled her
into habits and places and times has crystafized
harf oatas and Mt har 1ikinUa nd dialik.
ings, her hopes and fears. Years have brought
knowledge, and with II a fear that cssteth out
love. Is II possible to trust that sober, middle
eyed, unromsntic wooer so completely now that
passion has ceased to blind? Is it likely that two
people whose lives have taken their own pc.
cusr mould will be able to fuse their
lives into one And, after all, is il worth
while TO incur such risks fer what must
be pale, passfoness friendship There
are moments when the womsn's heart wakes
up in the Old Girl, and she almost hates the good
tempered. commonplace suitor, as he pleads his
faithfulDese, as he promises her q constant afec.
ton and esteem. Why didn't he force her into
happiness when something more was possible than
affection and esteem ab4 9p S taT psscs Tss
passionate longing dies into the dreamy chant Of
the Lotus-eater =
"Let what is broken remsin
me me Cos =, are e. nara g re eonele;
There is confusion than dsa a.
Trouble on trouble. pain pain.
And 30 the Old Girl settles down to Egyptian
immobiliiy and her work table. The only trace OF
the past that the outer world can see about her is
that her dress, like that of the clergy, manages
somehow to lag q little behind its day. She
employs the same milliners, she patronizes the
same bonnet shop if she falls back on the
friendly aid Of a little rouge or kohl, 1t is pre-.
cisely the same kohl or rouge that her butterfly
neice uses. But somehow the general effect
lsgs, as we said, about twelvemonth behind.
There Is nothing else, however. to remind men Of
the past. No one is more busy with the present.
No one is 90 full Of its fun and its foles no one 90
we'll up in the LIST novel and in the latest scandal
as the Old GIRL Not that she is reallyivery scan
dalous or romsstic. What she really wants is oc-
cupation and the occupation that life gives to
others, in thousand cares of children and but
cheers bis,she has to make for herself. And so
she fiings herself with intense energy into the
chaos Of little things. Little engagements, little
pleasures minute particles Of business, the tniest
little tattle, are all 90 many weapons against
the dreary inactivity Of her life. She seasons
a1d spices II well with little outbreaks Of temper,
with moods and fsncies and glooms and humors,
10 the hope of relieving its tasteIessnen. She
glds ii over with thin layers of literature, Of
at. Of poetry; she brightens ii now and then with
q delicate gourmandise. Il Is amusing to hear