The Sunday herald and weekly national intelligencer., 1891-04-12


thought HERALD reporter, who found this
interesting woman in the parlor OF the Arling-
ton one day recently. Mrs. Sherwood has not
been writing, thinking, and observing all these
years for nothing. Besides giving her an
exhaustless stock of well-digested ideas, it
has given her sound judgment, we'll shown in
her admiration for Washington. cit is in
many ways an ideal city," she said. ''There
is here what one seeks for in vain in other
American cites--a well.defned come-at-able,
intellectual society, mostly women, grant,
but still the most charmingly attractive So
ciety, and bound to become more SO. / think
of making Washington my winter residence.
The reputation Of the climate is fine but the
specimens that have seen during March are
rather discouraging to one afflicted with
rheumatic palms."
1t was easy to drift from climate and society
to comparisons of society and the different
methods of training the society girl in America,
England, and France. Mrs. Sherwood said:
81 have been abroad fourteen times, have
enjoyed residence in London of many sea-
SOUS, and was at the famous watering-places
on the Continent several seasons. In Paris l
had residence all told Of over year. Ihave
had the entire of the highest circles in all, and
fetal. / have studied sociology, or rather
societyology, to the core.
The English girl has a prolonged youth,
and is brought up in the greatest seclu-
sion. She never comes out, or is con-
sdered anything but a child up to eigh-
teen years of age, and it is oftener twenty
When she is out she never goes to
party, on the street, or to place of amuse-
Will har bar oh
her governness. The French girl is always Sc
cluded in convent walls until she is eighteen,
when marriage is arranged for her by her
family, and she often does not know anything
of the man, having scarcely seen him until she
is married. One type of French girlish inno-
cence becomes transformed into the coquette
and married firt, the most abominable of all
airts. You see one cannot consider girls
life without carrying it on into her woman
hood. The American girl is sui generis. We
all know how she is educated and enjoys her
larger liberty. She is naturally modest and
noble, self-contained, and feels fully equal to
travelling without older female relative or
chaperone from New York to San Francisco
without fear of being cast with American
men; but her ignorance and defiance of eti-
quette have exposed her to great suspicion on
the part of foreigners. For the continental
man considers all society women unattended
as lawful prey. I have sometimes been
tempted to say that there are no morals ex-
cept bad morals among the continental men,
but since do know few high-minded men
and loyal husbands among them, / merely
caution American women to observe conti-
mental customs when abroad, in order to avoid
unpleasantness and not place themselves under
suspicion.
''The English girl is charming, faxen-
haired, ,blue-eyed innocent creature, but in q few
years, as the English woman who drinks beer
and rides after the hounds, she has grown
coarse and become endowed with the tastes
and passions of men. Lady A. and Lady
B always have Iovers' after marriage. Not
to have one is considered by those London
highfiiers such bad form that if they haven't
one they will pretend they have. On one oc-
casion in the house of celebrated lady of
fashion in England the hostess impressed me
as being exceedingly proper and circumspect.
There was a certain gentleman of the COM
pany, however, who one morning-for we
were to be guests for several days-sent me
bouquet of rare flowers, which took as a
mere compliment, but observed Mrs. B
1--WE will say to give her name) looking at
me as / took them with an air of disapproval.
| felt considerably embarrassed, and said to
Lady D., Il think made mistake in ac-
cepting those flowers, but in my country it
would be considered merely a compliment.
/ fear have offended our hostess's sense of
propriety.' Pooh = replied Lady D., 'he is
her lover, and she is only jealous And
Immediately she plunged into history of the
details of their relations that would forever
close all respectable peoples doors in Ameri-
can society upon any woman guilty of such
open and fragrant defiance of the Seventh
Commandment.
''There is only one kind of young woman
abroad who dares to be independent and go
anywhere alone. This is the workingwoman,
whether she be dressmaker, shop-girl, artist,
or ltterateur There is dignity in honest
labor that usually protects even handsome
woman, and the fact that there is so much re-
fined sensuality in upper circles is because the
very rich so seldom have anything to do The
old saying is true that Satan always finds
something for idle hands (and minds, | say
to do The American society girl is mono too
moral when she comes to marrying CrGsus for
his money! but once she is bound to him by
the law, If not the gospel, she is true to him.
The American woman is not passionate, nor is
she fast She is simply vapid. The society
of New York's Four Hundred contains as Sc
verely pure specimens of womanhood and as
loving motherhood as the world knows But
wherever riches is the standard of social dis
tinction there will be bargain and sale of
womanhOod. Nothing can prevent it but a
wider culture wedge of some sort that will
awaken the woman of means to the privileges
that may be hers for the asking. Instead of de-
crying poor Ward McAllister, they ought to be
\ II. e.. 10 oct hoe had Tho