The Hocking sentinel. [volume] (Logan, Ohio) 1871-1906, 1886-06-10
i,ur GiGdy Girls Abroad.

''One is well off in :. g:rret at 70"
sings the light-hearted b. ranger; but
the newspapers tell other tales of the
workers IN the great art ccnters. The
chcapncsS of Europe is IL dclusion and a
snare.
1T is so only on condition of going
without Things. of living abroad as one
would not think of living at home.
The first time went abroad a lady
once told me, II had SO little money
that l lay awake nights planning how I
could get through on it. l learned a
great deal, bu; should think any one
a fool now who did rs l did. ISnor-
ance Of the risks ran was my excuse. }"
But there are numbers of those poor
students still in Earope. and the straits
to which they are reduced are often
pathetic. Especially the slender, black
robed maidens, With their pale, eager
faces. their eyes so wide open to all the
wonder and cnchaniment of the old
world. SO veiled TO misconceptions OF
their own character, are pathetic fig-
ures.
Sometimes they are pretty; almost al
ways they have a certain charm of
bright-eyed independence. They are
usually older than they look; but many
are far too young for the exposed and
peculiar life they lead.
Henry james has sSetclie,i The type in
his own fashion in "a Bundle of Let
ters:' .'She looks ut everything, goes
everywhere; passes her way, with her
clear, quiet eyes wide open, skirting the
edge of obscene abysscs without sus-
pecting them; exciting, without know
ing it, the most injurious suspicious;
and always holding her course, passion
less. stainless, fearless"
The Germans are kind to these
strangers within their gates, but to
themselves they make emphatic refec-
tions on that barbarous America whose
fathers so ship off their daughters, who
spend their all on instruction and trust
to luck to get home.
Sometimes their trust is vain, and /
recall! one charming young woman who
had stranded in Paris and was earning
a meager living as copyist She had
come abroad to study five years before,
and she WAS not likely to return soon.
She kept house like 4 bird, up four long
flights, and she frankly admitted her
economies in bread and beef.
1t was picturesque, that little room,
with its sunny window, its brick floor,
lis walls lined with her pictures, but it
required some philosophy not to call
her isolation tempting of fate.
A word, too, should be said, on the
growing fashion of sending girls abroad
to travel alone or with only compa-
Mon of their own age. 1t seems in
credible that persons who can afford
chaperonage for their daughters often
send them without it, trusting to luck
and the good nature of other American
travellers to help them on.
A gentleman told me not long since
that in his year abroad he had always
some one besides his wife on his hands
Now it was a countrywoman absolutely
alone, now pair of young girls, now
an invalid with pretty daughter whom
she had no strength TO chaperon.
There is even Il book recently adver-
tised as the doings of two girls alone
abroad. Now, we have no wish to re-
call the propricties of thirty years ago.
when a woman could hardly make a
hundred-mile journey alone; but there
is limit here, as everywhere, of good
sense and prudence.-Li2pincoa's Mag-
aziRe.