The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1891-09-12

GIRL LIFE IN PORTUGAL.
How Portuguese Maidens Are Trained
and the Wav They Ara Courtad

How Portuguese Maidens Are Trained
and the Way They Are Courted.
Comparatively little can be said of girl
life in Portugal, for girls have such a very
slight role In the life of the nation. In
childhood they are bright, clever and pre-
eocious, very much spoiled and very much
dressed. A formal respect to their parents
Is insisted on, however; they address them
In the third person, kiss their hands and
ask their blessing at bedtime. They are
constantly in the company of grown up
people, sit up late at night and are fire.
quently taken to the theater and opera.
A little girl of nine amused me very
much one day by grave criticism on the
voices of Mines. Nevada and Theodorini,
who were then singing at San Carlos, and
the parts in which they respectively shone
Conversation is not restrained in the pres
ence of children, so they are early initiated
into that freedom of ideas and freedom of
expressing them that is so marked feature
of society in southern Europe.
The education of Portuguese girls is
superficial, consisting chiefly in what used
to be called accomplishments"-m
embroidery and languages. In ell three they
attain great proficiency, and in the latter
Spaniands and Italians, are first class lin
GUSTS; they are, in many cases, as fluent
in French, English and German as in their
mother tongue, and conquer the difficult
ties of accent and idiom with great &C
curacy.
There are schools of all sorts in Lisbon
government schools, private schools and
convent schools belonging to the French
- c. Il E.
suppression of the national religious houses
in 1884 these nuns have quietly spread their
influence and multiplied their institutions,
and have now almost exclusively in their
hands the education of girls of the higher
classes. They leave school at fifteen or six
teen, sometimes earlier, and marry very
soon after.
Among the upper ten thousand" the
young people meet each other constantly
at balls, receptions, bull fights and at the
summer resorts, and their courtship is cos
mopolitan, rather freer than in France,
much less so than in England. It is in the
middle and lower classes that it is char
acteristic of the country and the nation.
The Portuguese are very conservative in
their ideas of the position of women in So
ciety, and they got their ideas from their
Moorish masters in bygone centuries.
Consequently, girls lead very shut in
life; they are regularly to mass on Sunday
mornings and take occasional walks dur
ing the week, always accompanied by one
or two chaperons.
Young men never call at the house, and
If they did would not be admitted except
on business" This strictness leaves but
one way open for an interchange of senti-
ments, and that is the window, and it is
quite the thing to make use of it. 1t is not
considered i'll bred to stare in Portugal;
man may stare at girl he does not know
as long as he likes; be must not do SO to a
girl he has been introduced to unless she
gives him some encouragement by return
ing his glanoes. A girl will sit at her win
dow all the afternoon looking into the
street, and her adorer from the street looks
at her, and this is so much the custom that
it attracts no attention from the passer by.
From looks they proceed to bows, to
smiles, to few words, then he follows her
to church, finds out if she is going to the
theater, and goes too, serenades her with
his guitar on moonlight nights, and finally
makes an offer to her father. He is then
received by the family, and allowed to
come to the house in quiet way till the
wedding, and after that the young couple
usually live with her parents or with his,
and the even tenor of their life continues.
/ heard a Portuguese gentleman who had
Travelled say: Marriage makes no differ
ence in the life Of a woman. Before it she
lives with her mother, after it she lives
with her mother What more could she
want ?''-Atlanta.