The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1889-04-06
YOUNG TRAVELLERS.

There are few things more to be
deprecated in the educational system
of the country, if it may be classed
as educational, than the unprotected
travelling of schoolgirls in railway
cars, street cars, and elevated trains
to and from general school or private
lessons. 1t is true that owing to the
absence of a good school or a com.
petent teacher in the neighborhood
of the place of residence. and owing
to the want of time, of knowledge
and experience and capability and
incl nation, of any in the household
to fill the place of teacher, it becomes
necessary for the young person to go
elsewhere to obtain the instruction
desired, circumstances either of bus
mess or money preventing the family
from moving into a place where the
required advantages are to be found
at hand, and therefore the little Jour
neys seem unavoidable, unless one
woud d have the children grow up il
Iiterate and behind the age alto
gether. There are, OF course, many
branches of study which might be
pursued at home; but thai course
would have to be followed without
the discipline and emulation which
have almost as much value in them
selves as the acquisition of learning;
but since learning not constantly re-
treshed soon grows rusty, if for no
other reason, there is seldom sufi-
cient acquaintance among those at
home with the technique of the higher
branches for them to be taught in
domestic fashion to the young peo-
pie; and, moreover, if in some cases
the elder members ofthe family know
the results which those branches
reach, but forgot long ago all Of the
b of their requirement, in others
those elders are seeking to give the
child advantages that they never had
themselves. However all that may
be, it is just as the child reaches an
age requiring protection that she has
also reached that point in her studies
which obliges her to go out in the
world to pursue them in the place
where that can be done, and the
public conveyance is called into re-
QUESTION; and there the young girl
presently becomes habituated to
travel, to strange faces, to the ad-
dresses Of persons unknown to her,
and has the bloom as effectually rub
bed off her manners, and possibly off
her nature, as might happen to
peach or plum if handled by every
wayfarer, and that without any i'm
propriety or forwardness on her part
at all.
Since, then, unfortunately, it seems
hardly possible TO prevent the neces-
sity of focks of schoolgirls going
here and there in public conyeyances
it becomes the duty of every other
traveller to protect them-to protect
them by ignoring them, to protect
them even against themselves. The
polite gentleman must let them alone,
utterly and absolutely, as much as if
the place they sit in were empty; the
motherly woman must keep glance
in their direction, remembering her
own girls; the conductor must not be
allowed to waste any attentions or
civilities on them; the brakeman,
though he see them every day, must
not know of their existence. And if
home training is not equal to the task
of keeping them from loud laughing
and talking, from gum chewing and
eye glancing, yet even such behavior
must be looked on obviously by the
whole carul of people, whose duty
it is, on the whole, to look at them
not as young girls, but as irrespon-
sible cherubic beings intrusted to the
public in their waytaring, to be ig-
nored as much as possible, and to be
treated neither rudely nor otherwise.