The Providence news. (Providence [R.I.]) 1891-1906, 1892-01-12
AS 1T LOOKS TO WOMEN.
A Dissertation on Several Sorts of
Girls.
ABOUT HOME DECORATION.
There are Advantages, 1t is Claimed, About
Being 40-There is mo More Terrible
Bore Than an Ignorant Girl.

The men who can marry, and who nova
days ARE usually thirty three, are men Of
certain experience and by no means fools.
They ARE attracted by good looks, whether
IN the foolish or the wise virgins, and are
carried away by UNEQUAL beauty, as they
were In the days OF Helen, and will be
when the world cools: but they are quite
conscious Of the advantage possessed by
the sensible and the cultivated. They
know what terrible bores ignorant girls
can be. how utterly unreasonable they
often are, and how much more liable they
are i'm middle life TO grow acrid. snappish
OF positively i'll tempered
There Ia no one 40 perverse as the woman
without intellectual interests whose situa-
tiop happens To he at variance with her
ideis of comfort, or who, being comforta-
Bile, IL conscious OF the faint contempt or
rather slight avoidance of those around
her Women are perfectly well aware
when men listen from politeness alone, and
those among them to whom that lot falls
grow as bitter as some disappointed spin
sters.
The men Of thirty y-three know perfectly
well how great part friendship plays in
married life, how IL deepens affection, and
how difficult it IL 10 feel friendship for
woman whose early charm has passed, who
does not understand one word in six you
say and who can neither sympathize with
failure nor understand why you have sue
ceeded Camaraderie, one OF the most do
hghtful OF all the bonds Of union, is i'm
possible between the able and the silly.
The men, too, are aware that IL is the
clever girls. not the simpletons, who are
free from the senseless extravaganza which
a 4 al. ~ 4 II.
exactly vices. the most permanently irri
tating in wives. That thing, at least,
culture has done for the majority Of cul
tured women-it has taught them how to
count. The immense majority of cultivated
girls are economical. Frugality il their
road TO independence. They could not live
their lives IL they cost their fathers too
much, and they learn to know the value OF
money and to avoid debt with horror. They
are not, perhaps, devoted TO ''housekeep.
ing as some of the unlettered are, mean
ing. three times out Of five, endless and
harassing interference with their servants;
but they can keep house, when they know
their incomes, Mt an outlay well within
them.
Men know what it Is to be bored. There
is no bore on earth equal to the woman
who can neither talk nor listen. who has
no mental interests in common with her
husband, and who thinks his friends sa-
tirical because they attend to her with q
faint sense OF amused amasement. The
men we are speaking Of believe also that
OF the two the educated are the more affec-
tionate
but girls OF culture are too frank Of
speech, contradict men, unless much and
visibly their elders, too often and too
bluntly, aud are therefore condemned as
formidable" This habit, for it Is moth
Ing worse. does not proceed In them, as il
does In most men. from either arrogance
or temper or want of self control, for they
Ilo not display II toward women, even when
intellectually their interiors. 1t proceeds
from delight In intellectual independence,
from AN unexpected sense OF mental equal
ity which must be made audible to be thor
0ughly enjoyed.
Even very sensible young men Of ex-
perience will retreat before IL with a sense
OF disappointment and choler, and never
again unless by accident, give the girl who
has tried, as they think, 10 put them
down" chance of showing that she was
attempting nothing Of the kind The habit
In mere gesture In reality, colts kick of
pleasure Ia the free field, and not, as it
often is I'm old women, a sign of vicious
temper; but IL constantly ruins bright
girls chances, and has done much to create
m society M impression which is, on the
evidence Of facts, entirely unfoundcd.
Cultivated girls have, in fact, a trick Of
thinking that argument is conversation,
and that contradiction shows mental fear
iessne~s-a trick which men, even tolerant
men. never quite like.-San Francisco Ar
gonaut