St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1885-10-29

world and all outdoors.
Another uncomfortable feature of
the business is too free and easy as
ISOLATION that follows with the en-
ployes of the train. The brakeman
gets to recognize the young girl, and
give her Ood-morning; so does the
conductor the men who belong to the
express companies have a word for
her presently the fireman knows her !;
and it is not at all uncommon for the
engineer to give her nod aud SEN
tence of some sort as she goes by. The
train hands may be quite as good as our
young girl, and even better, yet, wheth-
er they are so or not she has no means
of knowing and apart from that con-
sideratiOn, and the consideration as to
whether they add to or take away from
refining influences desired for her, it is
plain even to these employees, should
they stop to think of it, that it is not
desirable for any young girl that she
should acquire the free habit of con-
versatiOn with any one not introduced
to her by responsible people, be he
prince or be he pauper. Those persons
who guard their daughters as precious
property, who watch their every mo-
ment, keep off all evil and soiling
things, and then turn them loose in a
railroad car to be on equal and familiar
terms of conversation with those who
may or may not have been reared with
corresponding care, may as well have
spared themselves the trouble they
have taken in the first place it stands
every chance under the present con-
duet of young girls in the cars, of be-
ing thoroughly undOne in the time of
one quarters lessons. The well mean
ing conductor of the train will eX-
change a little badinage as he punches
the school ticket, or will ask kindly of
the studies he sees under way, or will
sit down from one station to another
in the vacant or opposite seat. The
conductor, often the father of young
girls himself, may do these no harm
but neither will he do them any good.
He will, at any rate, break them into
the habit of conversation with
stranger, and make it more easy for
them with the next one. The next
one will be the brakeman, who will
presently be following suit, and at
such times as he is diseugaged will
scrape acquaintance, and beguile the
young maidens thereafter with such
taceti8 as accOrds with his own taste.
And after him the deiuge
OF course there are young girls who
do not condescend to make the ac-
quaintance of people whose acquaint
ance is not regarded best for them by
their parents and friends, but these
are few. Away from home and its re-
straints, carried along by a certain
slight exhilaratiOn and by the conta-
giOus example of others, the usual
damsel, with the gay animal spirits of
her years, is ready for anything of the
sort and any hdbitue of the train may
hear her and her mates making merry
in the car before it starts, if the start
ing-place is from IL terminus, OF com
ing on board with loud hilarity, call
ing each other by name, and talking of
their affairs in clear, resonant tones,
as if there were nobody else present,
or there were nothing else of so much
interest in the world, or the place were
their own parlor, all with something
that approaches the braZen both in
face and voice and manner; and that
in spite of the fact that they were shy
and modest little maidens il very few
months ago. Nobody can imagine that
this would happen to them if they
staid and studied at home, or that it
happens III any other way than through
their railway travel and their intimacy
with the railway employees, who often
seem to have a sort of attractiveness
for young girls, perhaps because of
their authority i'll the train, perhaps
because of their general air of strength
and force.
The parents of these young people
who are being vulgarized, if unable to
put them permanently at school under
safe guardianship, would hardly find it
more expensive than their present
course to unite their spending
scarcely more, in addition to the price
of their lessons and the cost of their
railway tickets, and of the clothing of
their daughters, rather superior to
what their ordinary wear at home
would be-in order to secure the pres
ence in their own town or neighbor-
hood of some teacher capable of giving
the needed instruction without rubbing
the bloom off the tender fruit in the
process, or possibly of hampering or
gripping the girls through life by un-
desirable acquaintance, connections,
and Manners Harper's Bazaar.