The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-08-03
The Girl at Home and Abroad.

At this season every year hundreds of
girls leave schools and colleges and enter
the social world. The college graduate is
usually old enough, and has received men
tai training that viii prevent her doing
such foolish and thoughtless things as girls
younger and with less serious training are
apt to do. a girl OF twenty-five. who
makes her entrance into the social world
and most college graduates are usually that
old-must be innately vulgar if she offends
the sense of propriety. But the graduates
of the schools, especially the fashionable
schools, are usually younger, and unless
they have grown up under wise and edu-
Gated mothers they frequently mistake
amazement for interest, amusement for
admiration.
In late number of the North american
ReUieiC is an article that every American
girl should read; the article, entitled
american Girls in Europe is filled with
hints on the mistakes the American girls
make in the manners they adopt.
and these mistakes the writer attributes
largely to the bad models chosen She
speaks warmly of two American girls who
had made this mistake. She saws:
II have never seen two such aristocratic-
looking creatures as the daughters of a
hard working couple who had struck oil'
somewhere in the Middle States, who came
over, teeming with money and ignorance,
TO admonish Nice and set eXpectant and
most impecunious noble~ BY the ear; and a
prouder, better behaved, more badly speak
Ing pair of beauties never helped the Eng
lish novelist or the French playwright to a
type. i was much touched to hear the
~ - asking a lady near her, what she
lido to make her girls more like the
L. sglrls.' Give them year of school
in England and year of school in France, ;
was the sensible reply. For the shrewd
American mother saw her daughters were
laughed at. She saw that they neither
walked, sat down, rose up, ate their dinner.
talked to gentlemen, nor put on their hats
like the shy. proper, repressed girls that
had been educated in converts. She got to
know that their own country women dis
owned them. She also saw that they were
inclined TO copy bad models, not good ones,
which IS the besetting sin OF the variety of
American girls"
The writer of the article, Mrs John Sher-
wood, heard comment on the attentions OF
the Prince Of Wales to beautiful Ameri-
can girl in which the Americans were &C
cused of doing American things.n Anxi-
Gus TO know what these American things''
Were she asked a gentleman, who was a
literary man, ana VINO enter
tanned Americans most Hospitality, what
was meant by the accusation American
things
''Well, viii tel you,'' he said. ''In the
first place. the American pronunciation is
even amongst your cultivated people, most
unmusical and unpleasant to.us. l dare say
ours is TO you. Then, if you will forgive
me, we observe in your handsome young
- women an entire absence of that delicate
reserve, that fragrance of propriety, which
Is our idea of good breeding. do not say
that there are no charming exceptions
And. then, we do not like your air of sue
cess, your air of appropriating every
thing"
She also tells us of the comment of s
foreign husband of a American girl, whit
stated that his first impression Of the lady
who was afterwards his wife was shat she
was the Understanding woman he had evel
Been;n and in reply 10 the question, "Wher
did you alter your opinionl" replied
'When | got TO know her, l saw that the
hardness was all affected"
The young girls had copied bad morals
Much that Mrs. Sherwood has said APP
piled to the girl at home as well as abroad
She speaks Of what she terms the odd var
ieties OF American giris-the girls who low
their parents, but do not reverence them
And this is the sort of girl who usual,
speaks of her father and mother as paper
ana manner VINO nave accum
nlated money, or made it, and spend it en-
tlrely for their children. These are tn
girls who, having little wider social train
Ing than their parents, little more educa
tional advantages, but frequently lackin;
their parents common sense, think tina
they have nothing TO learn, and shut tn
moor to their possibilities that their oppor
tunities constantly give them.
Mrs. Sherwood puts every American cir
in her debt by these wise words:
SIN the matter Of dress. an American CIR
rises to the situation at once. She is yer,
rarely, if ever, badly dressed. Given sucl
an amount OF prettiness as she mas, sucl
auiclzness of eye, and so long purse, Pari
dresses her "a ravir,' and she wears he
clothes like queen, or as queens but sci
dom do. II is astonishing, when one see
SUCH taste in one direction, that one can Sc
such limitations Of taste in the matter Oh
manners; but it is quite evident that som
young American girls think if the outsid
Df the cup and platter is clean it is no mat
Ter about the inside. They neglect thei
speech which is matter of vital import
ince. For wherever we live whether il