The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-01-05

from her intolerance, aud her own oelte's
being simply the springboard on which she
stands.
Many causes produce the grim female. II
may be that she is grim from social pride, as
well as from natural hardness. II she has
been used to live with people whom, rightly
or wrongly, she considers her interiors, she
will probably queen it over them in lordly
manner. The prelatic blood is renowned for
this sort OF thing, and bishops daughter, or
an archbishop's grand daughter or Mrs.
Proudie, prelatic by marriage only, II OF the
grim class, is one of the grimmest of her
class. The halo of sanctity round the mltre
and crozier will be greater in her eyes than
the glitter of the strawberry leaves, and she
holds herself consecrated by her birth to the
understanding of every moral question, ana
especially to the final settlement OF every
| tough theological position. Or she may be
grim because of her isolation and meagre ln-
tercourse with the world at large; such as she
is found in remoter districts. This kind
comes into the exceptional or novelists class,
and is often more masculine than grim. These
are the women who hunt and fish and shoot
Ike men, and who may be found in all
weathers wandering alone about the noun
tains in short petticoats and spatter-
dashes-women who affect to be essentially
mannish in person, habits, and attire, and
who may be quite jolly, easy going fellows in
their own way, or else grim and trenchant, as
nature or the fit takes them. This is a kind
not at all uncommon in country places among
the higher class of resident ladies'; ladies who
are SO highly placed locally that they can
afford to disregard public opinion, and who
are so independent by disposition that they
naturally go off to the manly side, and make
themselves bad limitations, as the best they
can do.
The grim female tries her strength with all
newcomers. She is like one of the giants or
Of n Uh M ua1 in,
castles or caves, whence they pouuced, like
tigers, on all passers-by, and either wrung
their necks If they conquered, or retreated
bowling if discomfted. This is what the
grim female does in her degree. She dashes
on all who are presented to her, and has a
passage of arms as the first act of the new
drama. If her opponents yield out of timidity or
good breeding, or perhaps from not understand
ing the warlike nature of the encounter, she
puts her foot on them forthwith, and ignomi-
niously crusbes them; if they defy her, and
give her back blow for blow, ten to one she
cuts them, and becomes their enemy forever
after. For she has not breadth enough to be
msgDanimous and the one thing she never
forgives is successful opposition. Very grim
is she in the presence of human weakness,
moral and physical. Woe to that unhappy
maid of hers who has slipped on the narrow
path Of prudence! She will be turned out to
perish with no more compuDction than If she
were black beetle to be swept out of the way.
AS nurse the grim female is precise, pune
tual, but inexorabe. She would give the
patient a fit of nervous Mysteries that would
throw him back for a week, rather than allow
him five minutes grace in the matter of pain
full operation or nauseous draught. Without
variableness or weakness herself, she cannot
endure it in others, and whosOever comes
under her hand must be content to remain in
shape and to keep we'll braced up to the ut
r,nsl a., Af l,,t., Hln bad ~ 1n,o
arm or leg, she would 60 to her trouble like
Trojan; and why not others She would
merely tighten her lips and hold her breath,
and then would sit down to let herself be
hacked and mangled without a groan or
word. Te Judge of her by the notice given of
her in her sisters life, Emily BrontG was of
the grim class, and about the grimmest for
her age and state that could we'll be found.
Had she lived, and lived unsoftened, she
would have been one unbroken mass Of iron
and granite, without a soft spot anywhere.
Her very love was fiercer than other women's
hate; her strength was more terrible than a
mans anger, and her passions were as fiery as
furnace flames. Of all the examples we could
cite, she seems about the ittest for our model.
grim female has no mercy. She may be
just, but if she is go, it is in hard uncompro-
missing way that makes her justice worse than
others partially. For justice can be sad,
even if unwavering; and the grim female is
never sad, how painful soever the work on
hand and the sentence to be executed. Nei-
ther is she gay; for she is not plastic enough
to be either one or the other. She is ran into
an iron mould, where her nature is COM
pressed as in vice, and she allows Of no ex-
pansiop, no Tipping over, no bursting of bounds
anyhow. What would become OF us if all
our women were like her? Without any of
the little feminine weaknesses at which we
have our laugh, and yet which we do not
wholly dislike-without any of the pretty
coaxipg ways which we know warp our better
judgment and take us out of the strict course
and yet how pleasant that warping process is
without any even of the transient pstu-
lances which give so much light and shade to
awoman's character, the grim female stands
like an old-world Gorgon, turning
living flesh and blood to stone
When We look at her we are inclined
to forgive all the smallness and Stiffness which
sometimes vex us in the ordinary woman,
and to think that there are worse things than
the love of dress for which we so often re-
proach our wives and daughters; that flirting,
which is reprehensible, no doubt, might be
exchanged for something even more reprehen-
sible; and that vanity, of the gggling, coquet-
tish kind, though to be steadily discouraged
and sternly reproved, is not quite the worst
feminine thing after all. Surely not Ia grim
female who cannot flirt nor giggle, nor cry and
kiss and make up when scolded, is far away
worse kind of thing than a feather headed
reason of her foolish brain, but who manages
somehow to pull herself right because of her
loving heart. Weak women, vain women,
affected women, and the whole class of silly
women, whatever the specially of Stiffness
exhibited, are tiresome enough heaven knows