The daily gazette., 1879-03-24
The American Girl.
New York Times.

Since we have been a nation with a
name there has been no lack of girls OF
Our own, and for more than hundred
years this charming crop has been unfail-
ing. What would have been the cOilse-
querces Of a failure of the supply, it is
not easy to Say or pleasant to imagine,
and 1t is lar more agreeable 10 uwell
upon the blessings that have come fl ON
the constancy OF their gift. Certainly,
the millions of bright and blooming girls
who have made their appearance i'll this
new country have given not only the fin
est beauty, but the most powerful motive
to our rising civilization. A man is hard
ly a man until he knows what it is to love
one OF them, aud only when love is
crowned by marriage and It's fruits does
he feel the fall force Of the affections and
purposes that keep him ever at work, and
Identity his own thrift and power with
the welfare of his wife and children. So
it is that our girls, have, for more than a
century, been civillzing us, and, as our
people have pushed westward in their
victorious march, the school-house and
the church have gone with their new
homes, in which their wives and daugh-
tiers have been the presiding light and the
prevailing will.
Yet numberless has been the great host
OF girls in our America, the American
girl Is in a certain sense the creature Of
the present time, and the peculiar aud in
teresting character that goes by this
name belongs to the conditions and char
acteristics OF our own day. She is, in
deed, of the race Of her mother and
grandmother, but i'll some respects she
differs from them. She is not born under
the old-fas hloned discipline of household
industry and set routine, nor is she car
ried away, at once, by the new fashions
and fUllies that threatened TO craze our
daughters with the extravaganza which
Paris and Vienna allow only to emanc-
pated wives. The American girl is now
thinking seriously about herself and her
position, and we are trying to help her,
understanding her nature ard her oppor-
tunities. Our most original thinkers and
writers are busying themselves with her
prospects, and the recent iomances that
have found most favor have had their
chief interest from the American girl as
their heroine. Certainly the Daisy Miller,
Bessie Alden, of Henry James, and Lgtiid
Blood, of Howells, carry the day over all
competitors among the story-teller> of the
year, anu while they have charm for
thC tHty give
suggestive texts for the thoughtful stu
dent.
They help us toward what we are seek
ing for, that is, to more satisfactory
sense of what the American girl is and
is te be. She is surely, in her own way,
graceful, pleasing, and often beautiful,
probably on the average handsomer
than the girls of the great nations OF Eu :
rope more delicate and winning than
the English, more graceful and sympa-
thetic than the German, ana more pro.
nounced and satisfactory than the French
and Italian. Her beauty may be "A too
fragile plant, but 1t is not necessarily SO;
for some of our loveliest women are
buXom mothers, with half dozen
healthy children,and now that our wom-
en- are learning that physiology, as well
as theology, belongs to Them, and that
the lungs and the stomach have much To
do with the fair face, the graceful step,
and the flowing spirits, our girls are
gaming strength and roundness in
way most cheering 10 all who have an
aesthetic eye and patriotic hope. 1t may
be that they owe their rare beauty III the
great part to the electric air, the stimn-
lating light, and the changing tempera-
tuie that bring to them every year all the
zones from the equator to the polar circle,
as to the A pine flowers, whose surpass-
Ing loveliness comes from the touch of
all lights and shades hnd breezes. But