The Portland daily press., 1894-12-08
THE NEW ENGLAND GIRL.
Personal Charm and Intellectual
Power of Pilgrims Daughters.

She is in This Generation Composite Oh All
Her Observation-Disclosures Prescott
spofford's Wise and Kind Words.
| have often felt indignant with those
critics-critics who have no higher con-
ception of q woman than her power TO
charm the senses-vho find nothing bet
ter with which to chars cterize the New
England girl than accusations of pro-
nunciation which she never uses, an &C.
quaintance with Browning, which is to
her credit, and use OF eye glasses,
which indicates at mos only studio1s
ancestry and an absence OF personal
vanity, but which she wears in no larger
ratio than that of one i'll a hundred,
writes Harriet Prescott Spofford in the
Chicago Tribune.
There may be girls in New England
as everywhere, who are uncouth, ignor-
ant, and unattractive. But it is lmposs1-
BILE for any one who knows what he is
talking about to call them typical.
When we speak of plants, according to
DR.. Gray, the higher grade must be
taken as pattern. Or if we speak OF
Jews, it is not of the earringed and
greasy vender of old clothes, but of
David, the poet most read and sung of
all the world of poets; of Mendelssohn,
of Disraeli, of Heine, of Emma Lazarus.
And so when l call the New England
girl to mind, 1 think in the first place of
what the great Abigail Adams may
have been as girl, in the earlier time,
of the lovely Harriet Newell and of Ann
Rasseitine and the crowd of witnesses
that follow them. I think of the white
souled Lydia Maria Child, of Margaret
Fuller, with her spell upon poet and
philosopher, old man and young. /
think Of Lucy Larcom, who if she lived
near heaven, held the earth and the
beauty of The earth also close in her
heart. I think of Fanny Fern, over
flowing with rolIicking fun; of Mrs.
Stowe, with the humor that flashed in
brightness through the dark pages of
her book that turned the fate of nation.
FAME'S BROAD GLARE.
I see Mary Wilkins, the Incompatible
Teller of stories, that leave you smily
Eounsl the lips and teary round the lash
es, Gertrude Hall, that rosy, story child
of genius; Sarah Orne Jewett, with her
dark and stately French beauty, sweet
as any woman of who never poet dreamed.
! see Gail Hamilton, most brilliant of the
essayists of the day with a perpetual
charm for all within her personal radius.
see again Annie Cary singing La
Favorita, see Emma Eames as Mozart's
sad and melodious Contessa, as the di-
vinely beautiful Juliet, interpretingsthe
innocence and strength of love in the
tomb of the Capulets. 1 see Charlotte
Cushman, who in Romeo taught men
how a woman wishes to have love made
to her, in her youth with men at her
feet, in her later life with all women
there. I see Anne Whitney, molding the
clay of Roma, little woman, perfectly
modelled herself, as an antique statue,
with fire stolen from midnight heav-
ems in her eyes. see Louisa Hopkins,
in her girlhood, piece of pure Greek
beauty, in her maturer years with her
great poem of Moth erhood." / think Of
Helen Hunt, with her Cleopatra-like
variety; of Maria MITCHELL, living with
the stars, her companions; of Louisa
Alcott, the friend of how many hundreds
of thousands of children; OF Louise
Coulton, singing her trou badour songs,
beloved of every one; of Celia Thaxter,
born of the sea and the sum-" do not
need to go on with such names, to cite
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps holding the
gates of heaven ajar for SO many grew
ing heart, of Grace Greenwood or Rose
Terry, or host of others with power,
more or less; for no one denies the New
England woman's talent; there is only
a doubt expressed as to her personal
charm. Yet IN each one Of these women
that | have known the personal charm
has been more than the intellectual
power. These and such as these, since
there has been New England, since
Priscilla, bewitched soldier and scholar,
have been or are among the flower of
New England girls, and | cannot imag-
inc a higher phase Of womanhood than
most of them exemplify.
AS SHE TRULY IS.
The prevailing idea of the New Eng
land girls is a stiff piece of angular pre-
clsion. narrow-minded. narrow-hearted,
and ruled by an infexible conscience.
Of course, such young woman exists
in New England, as she may in Old
England, as / have met her in Virginia,
in Missouri, in Texas also. But when
one hears that type spoken of as the real
type it makes one smile to look around
on the young girls of Boston and the
lesser towns, generation of girls shop
ing the results of such nourishment and
hygienic care, tall, broad-shouldered,
1ong-lim bed with free movements of
grace, with rich color, fine features,
beaming eyes, with long and thick tress-
es, well rounded, well dressed, we'll
hammered, well taught, moving and
looking like young goddesses.
1t is quite possible that each one of
these girls has some strain OF Pilgrim
or Puritan in her blood, with much
cl,a hoe no L oil