Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1875-03-24
MISCELLANY.
The Modern school Girl.

Everybody is aware that sentiment
atty, slate pencils, and pickles go hand
in hand with the modern school girl.
She is as completely saturated with the
first as David Copperield was with love
for Dora she believes that friendship
is plant of immortal verdure. though
her own limited experience ought to
teach her that IL is of deciduous growth
she keeps a volume of autographs of
persons remarkable for nothing but
their insignifcance and bad handwrit
ing; her scrap-book is a mosaic of
moral maxims, comic songs, love-sick
rhymes, and decalcomanie her diary
is not so much a record of her individual
emotions as a reflection from the inner
life of her favorite heroines in romance;
she eats sweetmeats, and digests sensa-
tional novels her ideal is a black
browed lover at whom society shakes
its head, after the manner of Rochester;
while Lucy Shows Paul Emanuel seems
to her a very apology for hero. at
whom she would not vouchsafe second
glance. In composition she is prone TO
indulge in the melancholic style. and if
sentimentaiity is her god. Mrs. Hemans
and l.. L. L., are the prophets whom
she most affects. Read her letters to
her comrades and those she writes
home, and you would hardly guess that
the same mind had framed them both /;
the one is all extravaganza and poetry,
while the other is apt to be a meagre
statement of progress, a financial COM
plant. with suggestions toward dress
reform for our young girl has her
80 L. H.. Al
and puts no faith in beauty unadorned.
She pours out her soul to her bosom
friend but entertaining an idea that
older folk have no sympathy with the
longings and aspirations of youth, and
are wholly absorbed in the sordid cares
of life, with small interest in the play
of the finer emotions, her nearest kin
are often left in utter ignorance of her
peculiar faculty for gushing. And per-
haps this is not as unnatural as it seems,
since condolences must be invited by
condolences the bosom friend gives
measure for measure, but are there not
often CULTS of reserve existing between
the school girl and her mother or
grown-up friends in the matter of the
emotions2
Perhaps We would not have our school
girl other than she is, with the excep-
tion of the pickles and slate pencils,
the too early lessons in Irritation which
she practices, and the respect for dress
which she develops. Only few gene
ratiOns back our mothers sent us to
school in cool ginghams-yes, and in
warm hnsey-woolseys fashioned in all
simplicity the jeweller did not bore
our ears, nor hang chains about our
small necks nor did the mantua maker
shape our figures to her patterns a
generation ago. But to-day we hear
inquiries for corsets for children of ten
years, and we begin to reflect that the
school girl may not be altogether to
blame for her weaknesses and morbid
tastes. She wears finer clothes at her
recitatiUns now than her grandmother
donned on holidays - clothes more
elaborately designed, and in such sick
ening mimicry of admit fashions that it
would seem, after all, as if her preco-
cious fondness for adornment might be
reasonably charged to the vanity of her
guardians. However, our school girl
will doubtless work clear of her weak
nesses in time Her sentimentalities
will get winnowed in the process of
living, and the chaff separated. The
girl who weeps over "The Children of
the Abbey" and "The Mysteries of
Udolpho" at sixteen will be convulsed
with laughter on second reading at
twenty and she will one day discover
that the safest ear into which she can
pour her confidence is the maternal !;
while even the inordinate love of dress
and of masculine admiration that has
been ingrafted on the tender sapling
may be subordinated TO higher i'm
pulses in proportion as the original
stock is healthy and vigorous.