The Portland daily press., 1881-05-12
The Sixth Avenue Girl.

Persons familiar with the frequent change
of New York channel and habit have noticed
the rise of a new creation that may call the
Sixti-avenue girl. Where she was born and
where she dwells nobody knows, but she re
crafts he- forces at Fourteenth street and
Fourth avenue, and proceeds in floating ir
regular way along Fourteenth street to Sixth
avenue, never noticing Broadway as she
crosses it, more than if it were geographical
term-like the Eclptic or the Tropic of Can.
Ger. She turns up Sixth avenue with her
mouth wide open and her hand and belt full oil
brass ornaments-reticule, or chains, or
charms-but she stares, and stops, and lodges
in and out of shops, till she arrives at Twenty
third street, when another current from the
west drives her through Twenty-third to Mad
ison square, and at the last point the Sixth
avenue girl seems to sink through the earth
and disappear
The route have described is nearly I'M
broken series of shops and ''stores," generally
managed on the principle of "everything in
sight and a little of everything" The old
fashioned, discreet system of keeping every
thing on the shelves and having the counters
clean for each individual customer, and MAX
ing the price of goods a confidential, possibly
an occult matter, with cipher prices on each
article for the instruction of clerks and to try
tie faith and superstition of bargainers, has
had to yield, in the case of the Sixth-avenue
girl, to an open exhibit, brilliant counter dis
play and wild versatility of wares, from par
asols and button CATERS to zinc bronze statu-
cites and monthly magazines. Once it was
the young clerks complaint that miss or mad
l.axx hale <1,,c
satiate her curiosity and spend her sixpence,
but now half the shop is already down and
lying about to be felt and looked at, and miss
aud madam is the clerk as we'll as the custom
er, there being wonderful resemblance be-
tween the young girls behind and before the
counter, and lest there should be any young
girl lonesome among the customers, the clerks
are of assorted ages, in the most part Cuttings,
here and there matron's face, but densely be-
tween, as if waiting to receive charge of
Amazon cavalry, and drawn up in line and
carrying her bayonet in her back hair, her
cartridge box and ramrod at her girdle, the
great infantry element of the bazaar establish
ment is the regiment of the Sixth-avenue
girl, the very duplicate of the swarm before
the counters whence the clerical force has
been, no doubt recruited. A long period of
shopping dissipation, turning over thousand
gewgaws day, has brought the Cigale of the
bazaars to want, and looking around for some
thing to do, she beholds the advertisement,
rlIty young women wanted at the fancy
stocking counter" and at the first temptation
she vaults into her regiment, and all day long
fumbles the beautiful goods, advises the fresh
er Sixth-avenue girl about the bars in the
hose, the dyes in the trunks which are stain
less, and the cotton warp in the toes thereof.
Genial, highly colored, golden existence to be
Sixth-avenue girl for pleasure a few brief
years, and then to be translated into glitter
ing clerk and draw the salary of S. dollars
week and lunch served on the premises! For
this the queen of England would have resigned
her crown had she been educated on Sixth
avenue, and known what was perfectly
lovely"
France is the parent of the Sixth-avenue ba
zaar, but New York is France with a full
purse. Go to the Bon Marche, in the depths
OF the Luxembourg quarter, which is the ex-
ample for all Sixth avenue, and you will i'm
medlately put your eye on the Sixth-avenue
girl! 1t is she'who commands the most deli
cate compliments of the Semitic clerk: She
who wears more steel belt and gilt chain and
hat feather than any other cocotte; she who has
the ioudest, latest agony on her back, and
ready-made shoes on her feet, and reves in
fancy stationery and "whatnot'' ornaments. is
mashed" on yellow laces, cheap at half the
money. and buys her pocket-hsnderchiefs by
the peck, and all small. In America she
wears the most brightly-gilded dagger in her
tresses, gloves of six buttons that wear twice
and then decend to the ragman, parasols
heavy with lace that rise once to the sunshine
and then melt away for ever, and collars some
where between Marie Stuart and Queen Eliza
beth and "sized" to the point of elegance,
which at the first Precipitation of the Sixth
avenue girl wilt to common Grape and leave
her observation-disclosures.