McCook weekly tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 188?-1886, 1884-05-15
The American Girl Abroad.
London W GRID.

London W GRID.
Society has long been assisting GER
tain American writer's of parlor fiction
to create the American girl, and 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 independ-
ent critic to examine the popular be-
lief that the American girl is the final
and most finished product of civiliza-
ton, destined to whip anything else in
petticoats. According to Mr.. Henry
James, she is a combination of nervous
force, vivacity, and feminine insight,
while delicate and subtle are epittets,
which convey only the feeblest idea of
the operations of her mental being.
Indeed, so exquisite is this piece of
machinery that when the novelist at
tempts to pick it to pieces for our edi-
fcation, he rarely fails to puzzle him
self and his readers. A great deal of
her effect still depends upon her nov
city. 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 imperfectly understood.
If she is distinguished by one 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 advan-
tage of the momentary confusion she
has produced. Now is her critical
time; the eager competition of her ever.
increasing sisters will destroy her favor
able position; she is resolved to take
her fortune at the flood, and society
hears whispers of determined in
vasion in the course of the season at
whose eve we have arrived. The fash
ionable world of London is in state of
chronic boredom, and is always ready
| to welcome new sensation. Together
with her novelty the American girl ex-
ercises something of the charm which
half-educated visitor always exercises
on conventional society. Pocahontas
might have had the town at her feet !;
her successor is less simple and more
schooled than Pocahontas; but com.
pared with the smart people of Europe
she is uneducated. She has not, that
is to say, lived in an atmosphere the
creation of centuries, charged to an
extent impossible to realize with social
opinions, conventionalities and tradi-
tions. They are born and bred in the
European child. The American girl
has more or less to assume them; and
the assumption can be made very fresh
and naive. She brings quick and
new susceptibility to things on which
we are the slaves of preconceived i'm
pressions. 1t is the same with her
countrymen. They give you half-edu-
Gated Impressions of art and literature,
whereas the European is clogged with
traditional judgments assimilated from
the hour of his birth. All of which is
very piquant and amusing both in the
men and women-for 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 edifylng. Our con-
ventionalities have not sunk into her
being, and she is sbrewd enough to dis
criminate what part of them has real
and what pretended worth. There