The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-08-04
THE WESTERN WOMAN ABROAD.
She Surprises Her Boston Sister by Her
Refinement and Intelligence and by Not
Dressing in BIankets.

She Surprises Her Boston Sister by Her
Refinement and Intelligence and by Not
Dressing in Blankets.
Lillian Whiting. in the Graphic.
The keeEest comedy of the day is the idea
entertained of 1.-The West by the Boston
woman who has never left her native New
England. She has firm conviction that in
tellect is matter regulated wholly by the
ise:liermal lines; that culture is an affair of
longitude that beginsin Boston and decreases
in direct ratio to the square OF the distance.
Sometimes the Boston woman is little puz-
zled in her social classification. Having en-
tertained a misty idea that the West was in a
state of standardization and that its residents
| lived in wigwams and draped themselves in
blankets, she is little surprised to find the
Western woman wear the usual costumes OF
polite life and appear to be not unfamiliar
with the usual amenities of polite life. Mrs
*. is really very nice" remarked Lady
Clara We're De We're. Indeed, l should
hardly know from her accent that she was
not New England woman" Her accent
Angels and ministers of grace, defend usl
One would suppose Chicago or st. Louis was
inhabited by a different from the East
ern coast to listen to these EXPLANATIONS. The
standard of education and culture being prac
tieally the same in this mythical ''West" to
what it is in any other locality of refined and
progressive people, the tourist from that re-
gion is both amused and amazed that she is
regarded with compassionate approval
through the eyeglasses of Lady De We're.
The Western woman is apt to come East in
the summer She comes for material" Bos-
ton and New York are her clover fields from
which she gathers the elements of the honey
that sweetens life through the ten months
of the year when she does not live in
the East. When the Western woman comes
to Boston she is apt to locate herself within
easy walking access of the classic Common
flt..E Car fha M.1ao of Eit1a Awe
and the Public Library. Sometimes she has
friend at court who introduces her at the
Athen8um, which at once becomes her
special enthusiasm and the center, pro tenn
pore. of her universe She will know more
about Boston in week, historically consid-
cred, than many who have lived a lifetime
under the shadow of the gilded done. She
makes pilgrimages to Bunker Hill and to
Plymouth. She passes long mornings at the
Harvard College library. She loiters in the
public gardens in that enchanted hour when
! the. white brilliaucy of the electric lights
contends with the splendor of the
golden sunset that burns low over the Brook
line hills She finds out what the Woman's
Club and the Woman's Union are doing and
she touches q great many shams and
pretensions with that little divining-rod of
hers. She remarks that the annual state
ment regarding the 60, 900 superfiuous women
of Massachusetts is making its annual sum-
lhOi eOdi Al thO hO"pP"Poiot ohN SAO OIL unll-
ICES society a little to see where the co. 600
'superfiuous'' are. In writing to Western
journal she naively remarks that they ali
seem to be closely occupied in furthering
and supplementing the work of the male mi
norityl The Western woman finds it con-
densed inspiration for the year to pass the
summer here, and with her well-grounded
intelligence, her strength, and clear, intel
lectual discrimination, her spontaneity and
receptivity to ideas in her power to trans
nit these ideas into outward work and re-
alize them in actual living-in all this she
perhaps brings to the East as much, even, as
she takes from its historic stores of wisdom
and culture,