Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1884-05-29
THE AMERICAN GIRL.
Still Another English Attempt to size
Her Up.
London World

ton 20 create the American oirl aud
the most eminent of them. Mr.. Henry
James has settled among US to enjoy
his success. The time, therefore
would seem to have arrived for the
independent critic to examine the
popular belief that the American oirl
is the final and most finished produc-
ton of civilization, des tined to whip
anything else IN pettlcoats. Accord
ing to Mr.. James, she is a combina-
ton of nervous force, vivacity and
feminine insight, while delicate and
subtle are epiLhets which convey ONLY
the feeblest idea of the operation of
her mental being. Indeed, SO ex-
quisite is this piece of machinery that
when the novelist attempts to pick 1T
to pieces for our edification. he rarely
fails TO puzzle himself and his readers.
A great deal of her effect still depends
upon her novelty. English society
is naively slow to take the measure of
social novelties; and though London
has been flooded by our nasal cousins,
the American girl herself is still I'M
perfectly understood. If she is dis
tinguished by ohe quality more than
another among womankind, it is by
that attribute which is common to all
her cOuntrymen, and generated by
their restless life. She is cute; quite
cute enough to take every advantage
of the momentary confusion she has
produced. Now is her critical time;
the eager competition of her ever-in-
creasing sisters will destroy her favor
able position; she is resolved to take
her fortune at the flood, and society
hears whispers of determined inva-
sion In the course of the season at
whose eve we have arrived.
The fashionable world of London
is in state of chronic boredom, and is
always ready to welcome new SEN
sation. Together with her novelty
the American girl exercises some
thing of the charm which half edu-
Gated visitor exercises on a conven-
tional society. Pocohontas might
have had the town at her
feet; her successor is less SIM
pie and more schooied than
Pecohontas; but compared with the
smart people of Europe she is unedu-
Gated. She has not, that is to say,
lived in an atmosphere the creation of
centuries, charged to an extent i'm
possible to realize with social opinions,
conventionalities and traditions. They
are born and bred in the European
children. The American girl has
more or less to assume them; and
the assumption can be made very fresh
and very native. She brings a quick
and new susceptibility to things on
which we are the slaves of preconceiv-
ed impressions. It is the same with
her countrymen. They give you half
educated impressions of art and litera-
ture, whereas the European is clogged
with traditional judgments assimila-
ted from the hour of his birth. All of
which is very piquant and amusing
both In men and women-for.a time
Put an American girl by the side of
her English sister, and the contrast is
as instructive as the jealousy of the
English matron is edifying. Our
conventionalitIes have not sunk into
her beng, and she is shrewd enough
to discriminate what part of them has
a real and what a pretended worth
Therefore she can transgress them
without the transgression be imputed
unto her for sin, and she does. Her
transgressions and her criticisms give
her half her piquancy, but what is
amusing in her would be embarrassing
to her English sister Her natural
quickness of perception, has, moreover,
been sharpened by more travelling
than falls to the lot of the ordinary
English girl The Tables d'hote and
second-rate foreign society, if they
have not added to her refinement,
have taught her a precocious
self Possession Again, though
run in the States is getting to be the
usual autumn holiday, and know
ledge of American ways is becoming
diffused, yet society across the water
does not present the same stable and
obvious graduatlOns as in the old
country. Therefore the fair adventu-
ress, with little maneuvering, NAV
shrOWd her exact antecedents in mys-
terry, and find herself credited with a
fabulous dowry founded on Chicago
lard or Denver beetle poison. Indeed,
the popular belief that American wom-
en- bring their English husbands large
fortunes dies very hard, in spite of all
demonstrations to the contrary. The
English girl though temporarily
eclipsed by her rival, need not des-
pair. Her qualities will tell in the
long run. The apparent distinction
and tact of the American girl is as
snowy and as smart and as little part
of her as her Partisan dresses. Real re-
tnement is the attribute of leisured
class. This does not exist in the states.
except in the narrow Puritan circle at
Boston. The feverish pushing and
striving and barbarous ostentation of
the men must react upon their sisters.
And, indeed, American women are
the most snowy, restless and unquiet
in the world. Repose and dignity
alien TO them, smartness IS their IDEAL.
Nor are they physically equal to the
overshadowed English girl. Far
from evolving a superior, American
civilization seems destined to evolve
} inferior type of women. The Ameri-
can girl is as different from her En-
glish sister as the women of the in