Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1883-07-16
misftllantnns.


Engaged Young ladies are the described
wall-fowers fsociety. The vast majority
Of them are pretty or they would not De
engaged; but how many of them wear out
their beauty in the vain hope that engage
ment will mean marriage. and that mar
rage will mean happiness. Every girl
who goes to balls and parties, to the opera
and race meetings, to Saratoga, or on one
of the fashionable steamers to Europe,
can tell you that should one OF these
doomed ones attract attention OF the other
sex sufficiently to provoke an inquiry as
to her name and station, it - enough 10
kill all interest in her to answer: 'That's
'yllss So and so. She's engaged AS
for the engaged one, if she be faithful
sweetheat. she is bound to consider her
self as somebody tabled and ticketed, and
laid bv for future use. Knowing the
irrational jealously Of man, she devotes
all her thoughts to appearing above the
suspicion of a tiirtation-or even above the
suspicion of taking the remotest interest
in any male human being other than he
who has laid a first and second mortgage
on her, and may be flourishing free foot
and a fellow to it at the very moment she
is pinning in the metaphorical but tangi-
BILE weed of widowhood. If she be. on
the other hand, what is termed Lively"
girl, and cannot understand why young
lady who is engaged should make social
mummy Of herself, and mixes innocently,
but joyously. in the ordinary pleasures OF
girls Of her age. she Is open to the basest
misconstuction of her own sex. and will
surely incur it. There is not society girl
who reads these lines who. cannot call to
mind an instance in her own circle OF &C
auaintance where the conduct of fellow
female of her coterie-innocent enough in
itself-has not been stigmatized by per-
sons of her own age and sex as ")utra-
geous," simply because she had the mis-
fortune to be engaged"
Even the wife is more free from
espionage than the engaged girl.
The wife, at all events, has the fact
to fall back upon that she has husband.
He is supposed to be, and in the great ma
iority of cases is. the best Judge of what
his wife ought to do and say and where she
ought to 90. and with whom, whether he
is along or not. Any person, therefore,
who runs the risk of offending the vile,
makes "a certainty of offending the hus-
baud, and i, is this fact which makes the
society and the conversation and even the
presence Of young married women so de-
lighiful IN American social life. With the
engaged girl. who is tied up equally as
tight domestically. and infinitely more so
socially. the case is very different. The
mere fact that she is engaged brings down
on her an arrow from every female belt.
She is. and she knows she is, the target
for the very sharpest weapons of female
archery. II wounded she has no hus-
band to fall back upon; and her instinct
teaches her that the arrow which has
pierced her own breast would doubly
raukle in the breast OF her lover if she
were to call upon him to pull it out. Her
only safety is in the belief that it is not
there He ia the meantime. secure of the
prize which he has set aside pretty much
as he sets aside box of collars-to utilize
when, in his judgment, the proper time
has come--is pretty much Of a privileged
character in social life. Fifth avenue and
Murray Hill can furnish any day of the
week a hundred such. There is no re-
straint placed upon him in society. He is
just as welcome to balls and parties, and
to lead the German, while he is merely
engaged, as he would be if he had just
left the paternal nest. Far-sighted
mothers who know from experience that
six out of ten engagements never come to
| anything, do not frown upon their
| daughters. who not being themselves en-
| gagged. take delighted pleasure in show
ing themselves off at their best advantage
before him, pursuit in which they are
| greatly abetted by the knowledge or re-
port that some other woman has had the
impudence to get lien upon him.-Neu
York Journal