Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1892-11-19
THE AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD.

Foreigners Fail to Understand, but All the
More They Heartily AdSaire Her.
From the New York SUM-
One of the certain and constant satisfactions
| OF Americans travelling abroad is the American
woman, distinguishable everywhere. known as
| an American woman everywhere, and admired
| as Is no other product of what most Europeans
! are pleased to regard as the barbarisn on the
| other side of the Atlantic. How they are able
| to keep up the idea of America as bar1aric with
the joyous presence OF the American girl SO
often before them is a mystery that no one can
solve.
There used to be falacy abroad in the
| world that only many generations of wealth,
power and culture could give woman certain
graces of features, form and carriage. As these
graces never did exist among European women
of the lower classes, who are so busy at plow-
ing and reaping and at draaght-horse work of
various kinds, it is no wonder that the fallacy
| existed. But American women have changed
all that. There is romantic notion that
princesses and duchesses and the like gen
orally most arstocratic to behold. 1t is akin to
the other idea that great men are necessarily
great to look at As a matter of fact. which we
all know now, a high-born woman Is just as
likely to have huge feet and hands. an angular
form and ugly and insignificant features as any
one else.
But they were wont to urge. granted that
nature makes no distinctions i'll favor of long
ancestry, still the high-born woman has the
grand air, the impression and confident Sc
renity of manner which the lowly born cannot
hope TO initiate. And this has held on much
longer than the other faiiacy. because it rested
upon an intangible something which people
are fond of seeing in the high born of earth
whether ii exists or not.
| But the American have HisnrOypd
| this. None of US on this side of the water can
/ lay much claim to ancient and lofty ancestry.
| The pilgrim fathers and the settlers at James
! town. the pioneers OF the border and all of the
| original and pure Americans were simple,
honest people who had simple, honest virtues,
and were brave and strong and self-reant
| without any props from ancestors or without
! any great hope o. fame. And it is the daugb-
| tiers and Granddaughters of these people, said
| daughters and granddaughter being the first
of their race to have the advantages of the civ
| ilization that is supposed to refine and make
cultured. who have gone over to Europe to see
| what they could see.
| Now on the European theory those humbly
| born ought 20 be awkward and lacking III the
| grand airs thai line breeding gives. Even if
| their table manners were not positively bad
| they ought to have something of the peasant in
| them. some suggestion of the pioneer settle
ment and the mining camp. But 10 and be-
hold the American woman walking among the
high-born women of Europe has more of dis
ilnction III her appearance than the descendants
of ten generations of courts.
In the first place. these American women
whom it is so pleasant to see on the bouioyards
or at the fashionable resorts of Europe are
taller and straighter and more robust looking
than the European women. They have better
teeth better hair, better eyebrows, better
noses and better forms. Their feet are smaller
and more shapely and their hands are i,s long
AID slender and their fingers as tapering.