The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1875-01-26

The MODERN SCHOOL IRL.-Everyb is
aware that sentimentality, slate pencils, aud
pickles, 60 hand.in-hand with the modern
schoolgirl. She is as completely saturated
with the first as David Copperfield was with
love for Dora; she believes that friend
ship is q plant of immortal verdure, Though
her own limited experience ought to teach
her that it Is of deciduous growth; she keeps
a volume of autographs of persons remark
able for nothing but their insigniicance
and bad handwriting; her scrap.book
is mosaic of moral maXims, comic
songs, loye-sck rhymes, and decal-
comanie: her diary is not so much record
of her individual emotions as a reflection
from the inner life Of her favorite heroines
in romance; she eats sweetmeats and digests
sensational novels her ideal is 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 compost.
ton sue is prone to indulge in the melan-
cholic style, and if sentimentality is her god,
Mrs. Hemaus and L. E. 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 extra.
yagance and poetry, while the other is apt to
be meagre statement Of prOgreSs-a tinan-
cial complaint-wth suggestions toward
dress reform, for our young girl has her
practical side as well as her sentimental, 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 OF Kin
are often left in utter ignorance OF her pecu.
liar faculty for gushing. And perhaps this
is not so unnatural as 1t seems, since conn.,
dences must be invited oy condolences; the
bosom friend gives measure for measure, but
are there not often CULTS of reserve existing
between the schoolgirl and her mother or
grown-up friends in the matter OF the emo
tons? .9
Perhaps We would not have our school.
girl other than she is, with the exec ption OF
the pickles and slate.pencils, the too early
lessons in filtration which she practices, and
the respect for dress which she develops.
Only a few generations back our mothers
sent us to school in cool ginghams-yes, and
in warm linsey-Woolseys fashioned in all
ears, nor hang chains about our small necks
nor did the mantua-maker shape our figures
TO her patterns generation ago. But TO-
day we bear inquiries for corsets for chill
dren of ten years, and we begin to reflect
that the schoolgirl may not be. altogether to
blame for her weaknesses and morbid tastes.
She wears finer clothes at her Rotations
now than her grandmothers donned on holt
days-clothes more deliberately designed,
and in such sickening mimicry of adult fash
ions that 1t would seem, after all, as if her
precocious fondness for Accommodating
be reasonably charged to the vanity of her
guardians. However, our schoolgirl will
doubtless work clear of her weaknesses in
time. Her sentimentalities will get win.
moved in the process Of living, and the chaff
separated The girl who weeps over ".The
Children of the Abbey" and 1.-THE Myste-
ries of Udoipho7 at sixteen will be con.
vulsed with laughter on a second reading at
twenty; and she will one day discover that
the safest ear into which she can pour her
condolences is the maternal; while even the
inerdinate love of dress and of masculine
admiration that has been migrated in the
tender saping may be subordinate to higher
impulses in proportion as the original stock
is healthy and vigorous. Exchange.