The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1892-11-01


calm eyes a,.d baby mouths, the well
developed figures and honest simplicity
OF manner are in the eyes Of many men
more attractive than the independent
vlvacity Of the American. Two types OF
maidenhood are not unlike the natural
scenery amid which they have been per-
fected; the fragrant breath of western
prairies, the graceful freedom Of vir-
gin forests, the sparkling rush of mighty
rivers and the fearless beauty OF airy
waterfalls seem to have tempered the
clay and infused the blood of the Amer
lean girl, while her passive English
cousin reminds one Of stately parks and
well ordered gardens, lawns Of velvet
and meads knee deep in clover where
placid kline browse as if they We're posing
for Sir Edwin Landseer's brush.
In sauntering around England-and
one can see neither a country nor its
people except in sauntering-the pre-
dominant idea one receives is Of long
and patient culture. Every foot of ara
BILE ground has been turned over and
over through a thousand years of hus-
bandry; the grass is not so much grass
as the elaboration Of mans energies and
the chemists skill; the trees that shaded
Elizabeth and the second Charles have
been preserved and cared for to the last
days of Victoria; everything, in fact,
bears the mark Of mans jealous i'm
provement of natural advantages, and
the girls are no exception to the rule.
Those Of the upper class-that is to
say, those Of the landed gentry-whose
fathers and mothers and ancestors for
hundreds of years have been cultivated
as assiduously as the grass, and the corn
| lands, and the trees, and show the effect
of cultivation just as blood horses and
Devon cows show it; the clear skins,
the bright eyes and clean cut features
and shapely limbs show breeding long
and careful; and the conventional ideas,
| the narrow range of thought, the value
of precedent and the Importance of
precedence, all show breeding too. They
show the training of the mind in long
established formulas and the molding
| of manners TO long established tradi-
tons, so that the English baby is born
artificial, and as rule grows up in the
same condition.
Of course there are exceptions to this
rule, even among young girls, but these
variants as a rule are neither under
stood nor admired in their own me-
ridian; what is spontaneous independ-
ence of thought in an American girl is
| set down as suspicious eccentricity in
an English girl, and in fact the latter
never can possess that charm of uncon-
seriousness which marks the vagaries Of
| our own lasSies; there are too many
warning voices appraised, there is too
much Saturday Reviewing for the Eng
fish girl to step one foot outside the
beaten track without knowing it, while
our own girls follow their impulses very
much as the wind does and generally
come to as little harm.
But each type of girl has her charm,
and we would not if we could change
either for the other. There is charm in
diversity and harmony in contrast.
Crossing the channel or the narrow
seas, we come upon more girls and
thoroughly new types, and yet are not
| prepared to set them in place of inferi-
| GRITTY.
| The French girl is III condition of
slow transition; the jeitne tile of the last
century spent her infancy III the house
of her foster mother, and her girlhood
in convent, whence she was summoned
at sixteen or seventeen years old 10 be
presented to her affianced husband.
| Perhaps she liked him and perhaps she
did not; nobody inquired and nobody
cared; the alliance was arranged by the
parents on both sides, and the jeune file
at least acquiesced without choice or
| opinion.
In those days there was no such thing
as a French girl, for she was repressed
| almost out of existence, and only began
| to live, and generally not very wisely,
| after her marriage. But the slow, sure
| tooth of Time has eaten away very much
of tradition in France and done more
than the many revolutions in setting the
young women free. Liberty, that is to
say the French idea of liberty, is III the
air, and the women breathe it, as well as
fathers and brothers. Women, even
| young girls, begin to realize that they
are individuals and possess souls and
minds as well as bodies. and the knOwl-
edge emboldens them to think, to speak
and to act rs once they never would have
dreamed of doing.
Converts are a good deal out of fashion
nowadays, and Adele ventures to form
the opinion that Gustave is more to her
than Adolphe, even though the former
be bon pdrti and the latter not The
5euae file has looked over the fence at
least, and the look is often preparatory
to leaping, but the process of emancipa-
ton is sometimes timid and hesitating
one, and the French girl of our own day
will never acquire the freedom of the
American maiden, nor is it desirable
that she should, for she cannot in one or in
two generations be trained TO use it with
discretion. Liberty of speech and ac-
ton must be based upon deep convic-
tions of right and wrong; there must be a
moral law to replace the loss of conven-
tionality and tradition before it is safe
to throw them aside, and perhaps in no
country outside of America can a child
be born into that atmosphere of self
government and self protection that
gives her peculiar nature to the Ameri-
can girl
But turning for moment to another
great division of Christendom, let Us
glance at the German girl, who differs