The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1891-01-07
THE BUD OF TODAY.
She Is Highly Cultured, Probably
a College Graduate, and
Loves Athletics.

A century ago 1t was Evelina and
Harriet Biron, in caps and aprons
and sprigged muslins. with their soft
hair strained over cushions and their
limp waists stiffened with busks; it
was they and Cecilia and the rest who
were the buds of society, and who
smiled, and listened, and blushed,
and dreamed dreams, and knew In
their hearts that nature broke the
mould when she had made her Lord
Orvilles and Sir Charles Grandisons.
And then it was our grandmothers,
in their brief skirts, and skimp waists,
and slippered feet, and mitts, who be-
came buds, than whom h nose
gays they carried were not sweeter
or roster, and who bashfully admired
our grandfathers, Notwithstanding
their nankeen trousers, high stocks,
and pumps, and voyaged with them
to the Fortunate Isles.
In turn eane their daughters,
mothers, in the flush of happy girl
hood, dropping a conciiiatory cour-
tesy to the great social Sanhedrlm,
tricked out in more voluminous dra-
DtIItS. WitIl rdtll-cllOOtA y Ia Wv
forming ''berthas," and one-button
gloves. and sometimes, aIasl the con
vexity of hoops.
But however the fashion of their
raiment varied, and however the
standard of their etiquette changed,
to each generation of debutantes per-
tanned the ssme sweet, wide eyed, in
nocent faces, to each belonged the
same radiant and virginia. hopes.
But were they the same? Surely
there is a difference; for as the
thoughts of men are widened with
the process of the suns, there III
in our day a touch of seriousness, a
sense OF responsibility. eve into
frivolous lives and thoughtless souls.
Harriet Biron and Evelina were deep
ly concerned about the Gays and the
''sitn of their tuckeTs, and the
coming routs and the right sort of
chaperon, and they could talk with
out limit in the parrot fashion of their
time; but of the world of ideas they
had never a glimpse. If Lord Orville
and Sir Charles Grandson had not
been Tapped in the measureless con-
tent of complete dissatisfaction,
they would have been bored to death
by the loveliest of their sen in the
sweet seclusion of the domestic
hearth.
The bud of today, however, is
probably an alumna of some excellent
school, possibly the possessor of a GER
tificate of qualification for the Har-
ward Annex, and certainly the GUS
todian Of a greater or less knowledge
of the literature of foreign countries
as well as OF her own. Per-
sonally she rides, drives, skates,
plays lawn tennis, belongs to a gym
nastic class, and perhaps rows, swims,
bowls and fences also. Her 1.-THE, firm
body is trained to as obedient service
and as elastic health as her brothers.
She has a hundred intellectual and
social interests where her grandmother
had one. The life that awaits her,
therefore, must be q richer invest
ment, society must be a more valu-
able aggregate. than the life and
society of the past.
This larger culture and deeper ex-
p~erience are to saw our lovely buds
let us assure ourselves, from the mis-
take of so many debutantes of the
past, who believed that going into
society was a kind of new birth-a
rite (which conferred a mysterious
change of being, bestowing a perpet-
ual interestingness which should
make the postulant everywhere de-
sired and invited, no matter how dull
or u~nagreeable she might hitherto
have been. From this point of view,
| society was a matrimonial agency for
the insuring of young ladies' advance
ment, and not to make a rich mar
| rage in the course of one, two, or
three seasons was really to lie dis
credited as a desirable acquaintance
| and visitor.
But the later corners know that So
ciety is not a concrete good and gain
to be seized, like a gold field, by the
hand of the spoiler any more than it is
a wife market, like those great as
| semblages Herodotus tells US Of 1t is
a large congregation Of well-bred and
agreeable people, who are glad to
welcome any new conner who is also
well-bred and agreeable. A fine So
ciety is the fine flower of civilization,
and to be allowed admission to it is to
give a tactic pledge to bring to it
ones youth, loneliness, intelligence
and sympathy. To go into society
with such an understanding of its
scope and privileges is to secure gay
ETY., companionship, delightful con-
versation, but yet reserve time for a
life of ones own, with study, work
and unseltish work for others.-Har-
per'S Bdzar.
How Fashions Sometime Originate. -
Mary Antoinette had as much in
fiuenee upon the fashions of her time
as any woman who ever lived. When
she entered Paris in 1910 she waved
her hand to a milliner-one Mile.
Bertin-who made her fortune by it