The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-06
YANKEE GIRLS.

From the NJ 7. Tribune.
Any American girl who wants to see her.
self as others see her, should lookin the mirror
which MIR. Justin Mccarthy holds up in his
recent clever article on English and American
women. Mr.. Mccarthy puts the difficult case
with as delicate tact as the phrenologist Fow-
Ter, who used to read off a man to himself, as
mapped in his bumps, as a positive black
guard or possible thief, yet amounting the
wounding words so cunningly as to send the
victim away smiling and complacent Mr..
Mccarthy hints that American men are a lit
tie to apt in the science of lying, and that
their wives and daughters are overdresssd,
loquacious bores, yet does it in such a genial
hearty fashion that we are quite ready to
shake hands with him and be thankful thathe
says no worse.
The mistake he makes land although the
only one, it materially blunts the force of the
article) is that it is the New York belle and
Boston bel esprit that he describes, who are
by no means the representatives or exponents
of the mass of women in the country, of
The women in inland towns or country homes
with whom he never probably came in con-
tact, whose character and manners are in
truth the outgrowth of our established ma
tional life and show its effects undisturbed
by Fictitious or transient influences. Now
with the city girl in this country, everything
is Fictitious and transient; from her public
baptism to her public funeral she has the
perpetual consciousness of being before the
footlights; she has every day a scrappy ka-
leidoscopic view of most things in heaven or
earth, from the Gcumenical Council to the
last fchU; she lives in an atmosphere of
newspapers, fashion and politics, unceasing
contest going on in all; hence her current of
ideas is fluent and aggressive she tells you
the time of day with an oratorical twang
she walks as on parade, poses incessantly with
both body and mind will not ask you for a
glass of water unless she does it epigram-
matically. The same publicity and shifting
and swirl in her life account for her imper-
turbable good-natured philosophy, which Mr..
Mccarthy admits. There is nothing she is
certain of in her religion or bennets but that
they will change. Why should Diogenes
grumble if somebody stood to-day between
his tub and the sunshine? They will certainly
be gone tomorrow. Only the purest womanly
nature can be ennobled by the city life of
America; but it is SO enobled. 1t is in our
cities, therefore, that both the highest and most
degraded of our women are to be found. On
these Mr. Mccarthy has founded his verdict.
If he had penetrated deeper into our domestic
life outside of the large social centres, he
would have found the really typical American
woman in some village or parsonage, bilious,
of middle class in rank and culture, and quite
| as modest, bigoted, and unable with tongue
or pen as any Englishwoman of them all,
and as tightly bound by precedent and
prejudice. AS to brain work, she is apt to
make speciality of history or theology, and
sits, grave, alf-scornful half-compassion-
ate observer, while the half-taught advanced
female perks and plumes herself unwearied
upon the stage, and plays her tricks before
high heaven.
observation upon the singular freedom of
manner in which our girls are bred; 'the
absence of any duenna or Mesrour guards"
over virtue, and, on the other hand the ter
ror with which they cling to conventional
usages in dress and etiquette. ''The fear of
an English girl, he says, ''always seems to
be lest she may be supposed to be doing
American girl lest she should be doing any
that is not quite genteel." The riddle is
easily read. OF her purity, the Yankee
Standing, she is generally very
doubtful 1t is matter which depends on
the build of her chignon as much as her
fathers record on Change, or the height of
her genealogical tree. The Englishwoman,
on the contrary, is born on tolerably firm
social footing of some sort or other. That
there is any necessity for guarding her repu-
tation behind the triple bars of conventional
restraint and propriety, we do not believe,
despite all the damning evidence of Mordaunt
trials or SATURDAY ReofeaOs. We have not lost
the old-fashioned faith in our fathers British
wives and daughters, though the very iron
prisons of propriety to which Mr.. Mccarthy
alludes tend to discredt it with most OBJ
servers. The virtue which requires armor
one is apt to suspect must be i'll able to de
fend itself.
We commend Mr.. Mccarthy S article to oul
women. Sincere and friendly criticism
whether just or not, is seldom found an(
always helpful; and besides this recommenda
ton, suffrage and political matters in genera
have apparently lately thrust the subject oi
manners entirely out of feminine brains.
may do no harm to suggest it again to then
gently. We are quite willing they should
attend to the weightier matters of the law
but the minor courtesies, the softer graces oi
winning manners and winning words, the
tithes of mint, anise, and cumin that the,
were wont to pay, we painfully remember al
redolent of sweet odors, and very grateful t.
our souls.