Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1881-04-22
A BREEzY LETTER.
Something for Sentimental
Young Girls TO Read.

Pittsburg Post.l
Charles Lamb once wished no was
made of laths on a hot summer day so
thas he could sit on a hill and have
the Wind blow through and cool him.
Here in sober, practical, enlightened,
scientific 1881 there is q class OF per-
sons who have such a n%onsensical
morbid, unhealthy, malarial vapor
lowering over and COMPRISING their
brains, that it would be a Godsend II
they could only apply Lambs desire
to their heads, and let the fresh spring
wind disinfect their brain pans.
The class we allude to is
composed Of young girls, say
from seventeen to twenty-five
years of age. A few days ago the
press dispatches spoke OF a girl who
took a dose of laudanum and ended
her life simply because her mother
would not allow her to sleep as long as
she desired in the morning. another
girl out west fell in love with a mar
ried man who was honest enough to
laugh at her folly. She copied some
verses from Sappho which contained
three pints of salty tears to the line
and then drowned herself. Scattered
through the papers nearly every day
are stories Of equally romantic and
crack Drained girls. Itwould seem as
though an epidemic of incoming, sickly
sentimentality prevailed among our
American girls. But they are not all
affected thus.
A few days ago the writer became
possessed of a letter from a bright and
intelligent girl to a gentleman who had
once held a heal and dear relationship.
We do not know the young lady, don't
know her name, don't even know
where she lives, but we print her let
ter simply for the sake of the common
sense that American girls we're once
noted for and TO SHOW that still she
lives"
DEAR SRI feel that your neglect
Of me during the last few months has
been so complete. so utterly without
provocation and Of a nature so humil-
iating to one who had been and still
hoped to be your good angel and only
friend, that, to accept an explanation
thereof at this date would bet t lower
myself in my own eyes and the more
scrutinizing optics of my friends. |
will admit (hoping this to lessen the
intensity Of your grief) that | love
you still. Time and the grOssest of
neglect have not effaced you
from my heart. l would even now
make any sacrifice for your sake that
would be consistent with that dignity
which [ must support at any cost;
but consent to be all that | have been
to you-Never! Rather an ignomini-
GUS death upon a gibbet; rather a life
Of isolation such as Simon Stylites
endured on a gum stump in the DESERT
Rather-but why waste precious mo-
ments in vain, foolish, worse than idle
words, words too whose source is not
the bottom of an ink bottle-but deep
in the hidden resources Of a broken
heart. And now let me add one line
more to the few disjointed, fearful
ones l have written and | am done.
Let me ask when the hand that has
penned these lines, is forever still and
the tongue is gone to seek a 'repose it
failed to find in this world, that you
will think of me. And when Ireland
has taken her place among the nations
of the earth-then and not till then,
let my epitaph be
"MITTEN."
There is no laudanum, no Sappho,
no malaria about this, and ifyoung
ladies will read it it may do them as
much good as that spring wind we
smoke of