Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1900-10-29
"SMART" BUT ILL-BRED.
Bad Manners as Exhibited by the
Typical American Girl.

Bad Manners as Exhibited by the
Typical American Girl.
Mrs. Amelia Gere Mason discourses
in the Century of The Decadence of
Manners. Some of her keenest shafts
are levelled at the girl of the period.
1t seems a trifie unjust to the clever
and well-bred American girl to dwell
upon a familiar type so much en-
evidence as to over-shadow all the
others and pass everywhere as rep
resentative, but it is a question OF
tendencies. This typical girl OF the
day puts on mannish airs with man
nish clothes, spices her talk with
slang, not always the choicest, losses
her pretty head in proud defiance as
she puts down her parents, her elders,
and her uperiors-indeed, she admits
no superiors, though this scion OF
equality does aunt interiors and
snubs them without mercy-pronoun-
ces a final opinion on subjects OF
which she does not know even the
alphabet, shows neither respect for
white hairs nor consideration for
favors which she claims as a right,
and calls all this Swell" or Smart,
and a proper expression of her
fashionable, or questionable, indie
pendence.
The same spirit runs through the
entire social gamut. There is moth
ing more contagious than bad man
ners; it is so easy for the selfish
instincts to come uppermost when the
pressure of law, written or I'M
written, is removed. The insolence of
servants is sufficiently emphasized.
Even the shop-girl waits upon you
with half-disguised impertinence,
often impertinence without any dis
guise, and replies to your civil wora
with lofty stare, as much as to say,
Since you are polite to me you cannot
be Of much consequence"
The causes are not far to seek. A
potent one is the rush and hurry OF
life in which everybody is intent upon
doing the most in the least possible
time. There is no leisure for small
courtesies. 1t is a heterogeneous
scramble for the 1oaves and fishes, in
which the survival of the ittest re
solves itself into a survival of the
strongest. It is something akin to
brute force that gains the prize,
whether it be a seat in the car or
seat in congress. Indeed, we claim,
as a part Of our national glory, the
trait so well expressed by the word
what one pushes SO long as it stands
IN the way. Men in the garb of
gentlemen do not scruple to thrust
aside delicate women who happen to
be moving before them in the pro-
over one another. 1t is the same
spirit applied to the minor morals as
that which prompts the Wall Street
magnate to walk over his weaker
rival, and the laboring man who has
organized in the name Of freedom and
human brotherhood to crush out of
eXistance, if he can, his poorer neigh
bors who have not-the spirit of in
stinctive, though sometimes unconsci-
Gus, selfishness, whether it be crudely
clear or hidden under some high
sounding name Nor is the fact with
out it's significance that women, who
are natural arbiters of manners as
we'll as conservators of morals, have
been driven by necessity into the
hustling crowd. It is an alternative
between struggling for foothold in
the world or sinking; and success,
nine times out of ten, is the triumph
Of aggression This in itself is fatal
to the self-effacement which is so
strong an element of good breeding,
and tends toward radical change in
the habits and traditions of woman
hood, which must react more or less
upon society.
By society women" I do not mean
the type that first presents ITSELF the
brilliant compound of style, daring,
and Paris gowns, whose life begins
and ends with entertaining and being
entertained, who puts the fashion of
hand-shake, the porcelain of cut-g1ass