The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-09-01

challenges our gallantry for the same reason
that she fails to win our attention. On al
points she is armed against the one. and il
every respect is independent of the other
Her policy is in the finesse Of her head Til,
strength of the other lies in the sincerity o
her heart. Whether the acquired independ
ence OF the one Is fair equivalent for the
winning dependence of the other. each indi
vldual will judge according to his taste.
In this relation, however. I can not pas:
over significant fact in the results of the
french system of female education. If the
exposed lives Of the poorer class of girls lead
them almost inevitably into vice, or forming
temporary connections in lieu of the more
permanent ties of marriage, the tendency OF
the unnatural seclusion practiced in the
higher Summaries Of learning is even worse
From being never trusted the girls become
adroit hypocrites, and, as with Eve, the apple
OF knowledge, though tabooed, is covertly
plucked. A celebrated institution near Paris,
IN the charge of the, government, where five
| hundred daughters. sisters and neices of the
members of the Legion of Honor receive a
highly finished education, under the rules of
almost military severity, furnishes a large
| proportion of the 'air aud frail sirens of the
| QUARTER Breda. Udouotedly the difficulty of
negotiating marriages without the indispensa-
BILE dowry or do is an active promoter OF
| illicit connections between beauty and wealth.
Faulty and memorable social laws are equally
as accountable for this state of morals as in
| dividual frailty.
It is from this class that we can select the
most striking vicis,itudes of female career.
In their youth, redolent with lovliness-
buried, as it were in the wealth laid at their
feet-the mistresses of many hearts and
purses, living in apartments more luxuriously
furnished than those of any palace, daily ex-
hibiting their envied charms in sumptuous
equipages in Bois de Boulogne, and nightly
outshining aristocrahc beauty at the opera
they purchased their short-lived, sensuous
career at the expense of an age of regretful
misery and repuisive employments.
"Look on THU picture, and then on that"
Lovers and loneliness have fed The tri-
umphs of vanity are now succeeded by the
retributlOns of want and age. Folly and ex-
travagance have proved but Indifferent FOSTER
parents for infirmity and the loss of beauty.
The harvest of sin is being reaped upon
her withered, charmless frame. Can you
recognize in this sad ruin the joyous being
whose life but few years before was one holt
day! Perhaps she was an actress, and you
yourself covered her with flowers and bravos
Her garments are now the mockery of her
former elegance, even as she is the phantom
and offers you programme or cricket as you
enter your loge, for she has become simple
"ouvreuse" or door-keeper to the boxes at
the theaters and opera houses, but too CRATE
full to receive few sous where once she threw
away gold. In Paris there are some five hun
dred ouvreuses." who depend for their SUBJ
sistence upon the voluntary contributions of
the public. Some favored few are said to
gain two thousand francs year, while others
are reduced to as many hundreds. They have
the privilege OF dying in hospital and being
buried in the common "fosss" or pit
The situation of the ''ouvreuse," although
it requires the possessor to be up until after
midnight, is one of the easiest, or, as Ameri-
cans would say, one Of the most genteel re-
sorts for feminine decay and poverty. The
occupations which they fill are such as can
have their origin only in the fertile evil of
rank, aristocratic civilization. They are of
every shade of integrity and crime, refine
ment and grossness, from the honest and vir-
tuous grisette who laboriously plies her needle
in her cosy garret-room, to the political spy,
fashionable pimp, or hraggish corrupter of
virginity in the pay Of hoary debauchism both
exhibiting in their repulsive physiognomies
the traces Of every vice that degrades human
nature. They include alike the bewitching
glove-mender, the more stately elegance OF
the "dames du compton" and the wretched
vendor of old hats, or peddler of all wares and
agent for every necassi y which pride, poverty
or shame seek to hide from daylight.
Even here we have but sounded the depths
of the more laborious and disgusting of the
female outdoor employments At all seasons
the shearer of dogs and cats and the gatherer
of garbage, whose sweetest bouquet is reek-
irg pile of street filth, are to be seen pursuing
their calling. They are worthy Of all COM
mendation for their determination to earn
their daily bread rather by the sweat OF their
chances of crime.
The female copyists at the Louvre are a
numerous class, with a decidedly artistic air
in the negligence of their toilets. They find
time both to fulfill their orders, and have an
eye to spare to the public, and particularly to
their male brethren. When they are en-
ployed upon ordered copies, they work with |
assiduity; when not, they more agreeably
divide their time between complaisant beaus
and the arts. As for the rest, they have for
their home during most of the week the COM
Portable galleries of the finest museum in
Europe, inhabiting palace by day and Sleep
ing in garnet at night.
The patronage of the government is some
times ludicrously applied toward the fine arts.
An applicant for post in the bureau of the |
telegraph received an order to execute bust |
ia marble; not an impossibility if he allowed |
himself the same latitude of execution, which |
! certain Minister of the Interior is said to
have advised to the widow of an employees,
powerfully recommended to his favorable con-
,ideration. He gave her an order for copy
If the mammoth painting of Jesus at the
house of Martha and Mary, by Paul Veronese.
"But, Monsieur lie Ministre, do not know
low to paint I never touched brush in
ny life"
"Never mini; take the copy. You can
lave it done ny another and arrange to re-
eive the pay"
The obliging counsel was not lost.
1 have given but a few. out of the extraor-
linary employments of the female sex at
,aris-enough, however, to show that there
wide difference between the relative po-
itiops of the poorer classes in France and
he United States.
In the United States we have monotonous
isplay Of broadcloth and silks, with no dis
inguishing features by which one class of
itizens can be Disseminated from the other.
he individual alone may be remarked by
Lx.A M l.ko |