The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1885-11-14
The Young Girl and the Cars.
Harper's Bazaar.


cial call to study may be, in some place
at distance from their homes, and to
travel the distance by rail.
There is, perhaps, no school in the
place of the parents residence of sufi-
cient scope to be of use to the children,
and as the children feel it incumbent
on them to acquire the particular branch
of knowledge which engages their at
tention, they have no alternative but to
leave home altogether for some spot
where lessons are attainable-a course
often undesirable, often not to be COM
passed financially-or else to make the
daily journey to the spot by rail.
The acts of daily entering a public
conveyance and confronting the stare
of multitude of inquiring eyes, of ia
miliarizing themselves fully with the
scenery of the road, and the manner of
travel and the customs of the car, and
the appearance of the travellers in it, of
being accosted by this person and by
that, unknown before, of answering
questions to strangers, and of sometimes
being obliged to ask them of the same
all these give the young girl a sense
of freedom that she never felt at school,
that she never felt at home, and that it
is hardly good for her to feel anywhere.
Nothing is capable, it seems, of SO soon
rubbing the bloom off the character as
this frequent contact, this familiarity
and sense of ease. this looking unabash-
ed in the face of the strange man who
passes this superior knowledge of the
ways of the trains, this general condi-
ton of feeling perfectly at home in the
eyes of all the world and all outdoors.
Another uncomfortable feature of the
business is too free and easy associa-
ton that follows with the employees of
the train. The brakeman gets to re-
cognize the young girl, and gives her
good morning; SO does the conductor;
the men who belong to the express
companies have word for her; pres
emily the fireman knows her; and it is
not at all uncommon for the engineer
to give her nod and a sentence of
some sort as she goes by. The train
hands may be quite as good as our
young girl, and even better, yet, whether
they are SO or not she has no means of
knowing; and apart from that consid-
Grafton, and the consideration as to
whether they add to or take away from
the 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 free habit of conversation
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 movement, keep
off all evil and soiling things, and then
turn them loose in railroad car to be
on equal and familiar terms of conver-
sation 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 conduct of young girls in
the cars, of being thoroughly undone in
the time of one quarters lessons. The
well-meaning conductor of the train
will exchange 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 an
other 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 a
stranger, and make it the more easy for
them with the next one. The next one
will be the brakeman, who will present
ly be following suit, and at such times
as he is disengaged will scrape acquaint-
ance, and beguile the young maidens
thereafter with such facetia as accords
with his own taste. And after him the
deluge!
Of course there are young girls who
do not condescend to make the ac-
quaintance ofpeople whose acquaintance
is not regarded best for them by their
parents and friends, but these are few.
Away from home and its restraints,
carried along by certain slight exhil-
Grafton and by the contagious example
of others, the usual damsel, with the
gay animal spirits of her years, is ready
for anything of the sort; and any
Aa6ttute of the train may hear her and
her mates making merry in the car be-
fore it starts, if the starting place is
from a terminus, or coming on board
with loud hilarity, calling 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 par
lor, 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 very few months ago. No
body can imagine that this would hap
pen to them if they staid and studied
at home, or that it happens in any other
way than through their railway travel
and their intimacy with the railway en-
ployes, who often seem to have sort
of attractiveness for young girls, per-
haps because of their authority in the
train, perhaps because of their general
air of strength and force.
The parents of these young people
who are being vulgarized by this con
tact of the train, if unable to put then
. permanently at school under safe guar
dianship, would hardly find it more ex
pensive than their present course tt
, unite their means-spending scarcel.
more, in addition to the price of thei
lessons and the cost of their railwa
, tickets, and of the clothing of thei
daughters, rather superior to what thei
ordinary wear at home would be-i
order to secure the presence in thei
e own town or neighborhood of som
S teacher capable of giving the needle
a instruction without rubbing the blooI
|, off the tender fruit in the process, {