Prescott journal. [volume] (Prescott, Wis.) 1861-1871, 1871-03-15
Great Girls.

same number of years will be substan
tally of different epochs of life-the on
faded in person, wearied in mind, fossil
lied in sympathy; the other fresh botl
in face and feeling, with sympathies a.
broad and keen as they were when she
was in her first youth and perhaps even
more so; with brain still as receptive, q
temper still as easy to be amused, as
ready to love, as quick to learn, as when
she emerged from the school room to the
drawing room. The one you suspect OF
undertaking her age by half q dozen
years or more when she tells you she is
not over forty. the other makes you won
der if she has not overstated hers by just
SO much when she laughingly confesses
to the same age. The one is an old wo-
man, who seems as if she had never been
young, the other Just great girl yet,
who seems as if she would never grow
old; and nothing is equal between them
but the number of days each has lived.
This kind of woman, SO fresh and ac-
tive, so intellectually as we'll as emotion
ally alive, is never anything but girl;
never loses some of the sweetest charac.
teristics of gin Ihood. You see her first
as young wife and mother, and you
imagine she has left the school room for
about as many months as she has been
married years. Her face has none OF
that untranslatable expression, that look
of robbed bloom, which experience gives;
n her manner is none of the preoccupa
ton so observable in most young moth
ers. whose attention seems wholly given
to the thing on hand. and whose hearts
seem always full of a secret care or an
unimparted JOY. Brisk and airy, bra
wing all weathers, ready for any amuse
ment, interested in the current questions
of history or society, by some wonderful
faculty of organizing seeming to have ali
her time to herself as if she had no house
cares and no nursery duties, yet these
somehow not neglected, she is the very
ideal of happy girl rowing through life
as through daisy field, on whom sor
row has not yet laid its band, and to
whose lot has fallen no Dead Sea apple.
And when one hears her name and style
for the first time as a matron, and sees
her with two or three sturdy little fellows
hanging about her neck and calling her
mamma, one feels as if uature had some
how made a mistake, and our slim and
simple-mannered damsel had only made
believe to have taken up the serious bur
dens of life, aud was nothing but great
girl after all.
Then there are great girls of another
Eind-women who, losing the sweetness
of youth, do not get in its stead the dig
nifty of maturity; who are fretfnl. impa
tent, undisciplined, knowing no more of
themselves or human nature than they
did when they were nineteen, yet retain
ing nothing of that innocent simplicity,
that single, hearted freshness and joyous
ness of nature, which one does not wish
to see disturbed, even for the sake of
deeper knowledge. These are the wo
men who will not get old, and who con
sequently do not keep young; who, when
they are fifty. dress themselves in gauze
and rosebuds, and think to conceal their
years by judicious use of many paint
pots and the liberality of the b. ir dress
er; who are jealous of their daughters,
whom they keep back ms much and long
as they can, and terribly aggrieved AT
their irrepressble six feet of sonship;
women who have trick Of putting up
their fans before their faces as if they
were blushiug, who give you the impres
sion of flounees and ringlsts, and who
fiirt by means of much laughter and
long sustained giggle; who talk inces
sanity, yet have said nothing to the pur
pose when they have done; and who sim
per and confess they are not strongmini
ed, bet only fan awfully silly little thing,
when you try to lead the conversation
into anything grayer than fashion and
flirting. They are women who never
learn repose of mind or dignity of man
ner: who never lose their taste for mind
less amusements, and never acquire one
for nature or quiet happiness; and who
like TO have lovers always hanging about
them-men for the most part younger
than themselves, ghom they call naughty
boys, and tap playfully by way of rebuke.
They are women unable to give young
girls any kind of advice on prudence or
conduct, mothers who know nothing of
children, mistressss ignorant of the al
phabet, of housekeeping, wives whose
husbands are merely the bankers, and
most probably the bugbears, of the es
Enlistment; women who think it horri-
bic to get old, and who resent the idea as
personal injury, and to whom. when
you talk of spiritual peace or intellectual
pleasures, you are rs unintelliglble as If
you were discoursing in. the Hebrew
tongue.
As class they are wonderfully inapt,
and their hands are practically useless,
save as ring stands and glove stretchers;
Tor they can do nothing with them, not
even frivolous fancy work; they read
only novels. aud not one of the marvels
of their existence is what they do with
themselves in those hours when they are
not dressing. flirting, or paying visits
London Saturday Review.
| have observed that he who affects
elegance merely because another is ele.
gait. is apt to be vulgar. And hence
much of the luxury of our great cities.
though splendid in itself, is coarse and
- aQaof honausa II Iooa moi in.