The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-06-15
WOMAN'S
WORLD.

New Orleans Picayune. Dorothy Dix
says:
We have a right TO be proud of the
American girl. No other one in all
the wide earth is like her. In other
countries older people lead and the
young persons" follow. In America
she is the pioneer, mad her dutiful pa
rents meekly toddle along in her wake.
She led the American invasion of Eu-
rope, and showed what could be done
towards reviving moribund industry
by infusing new blood and money into
it. She has created school of beauty
as distinct and individual as that of
the Venus de Milo. She has achieved
the liberty of her sex. not by fighting
for it, but simply by taking it. Her
versatility is the wonder of the world.
Give her but time to pull off her apron
and wipe her hands. and she can go
from the wash tub to a queens recep-
ton, and take her place as a duchess
with a haughtineSs and frigid exclu-
siveness that no woman merely born
10 the purple can hope to attain. The
only drawing rooms in London whose
doors are shut in the face of the Amer
leans are those presided over by Amer
lean girls, who originally hailed from
Squedunk Corners.
There is no other phase of American
life so characteristic, so amusing and
so pathetic as the way in which we
regard our girls. They are our fetch
We worship them, and offer UP our
selves, and our best before them; and
it is the sober truth that the average
family is bound to the chariot wheel
of the daughter Of the house. and go
and come as she listeth.
Europeans who are used to regarding
girls as an incumbrance that must be
married off as soon as possible, and
who are expected to occupy a very
back seat until they do laugh at this
exhibition of doting fondness; but to
the one who understands it, there is
no more beautiful or touching exhibit
ton of chiValry than the chivalry an
American man shows to his own daugh-
ter His life may have been hard and
rough; he may have known what 1t
was to go hungry and cola he has had
no time to acquire the finer arts and
polish of society, but his daughter
shall have all that he has missed. In
her all the pride and ambition of his
life takes visible and outward form
She is the idealization of the beauty
and the grace and the fneness of
things he has dimly comprehended; and
when he sees her-tall and stately and
silks and cleaning with jewels-she
epitomizes the success of his life.
Nor is this attitude towards the
daughter of the family confined to the
rich. Among the poorer classes it is
even more poignantly touching. In the
average middle class family everything
is given to the girl as her right; she
gets a better education, and is sent to
school long after the boys have been
put to work. Mother may have to
wear turned dresses and shabby bon
nets, but Sallys gowns come from the
best dressmaker in the town. Mother
may have to wash dishes and do the
homework, but Sally's nails are mani
cured, Six o'clock in the morning sees
mother standing over the cooking
stove, getting breakfast for father and
the boys, but everybody creeps softly
by Sallys door for fear of waking her
up.
curious and a natural result of this
state of affairs has been to make
young girls the arbiter of society. No
goddess ever asked permission of her
wOrshlpers as to what she would do,
and the American girl is a law unto
herself In the slang of the day, what
she says goes" with the family. In
older countries the mother reads
book before the young person" is per-
mitted TO peruse it, Here Maude reads
l.
it. Abroad no one would think of per-
hitting a young girl to witness plays
that are even suggestive. In this coun-
try young girls form half of the audi
ence at the most VIGOROUSLY immoral
productions l even once heard an 49,
year-old miss say "Oh, 1 enjoyed the
Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith' very much,
but shouldn't like mamma to see it.
She is so old-fashioned it would be
sure to shock her." And one facetious
theatrical manager actually advertised
a rural drama as being so pure girl
could tike her mother to see it.
Worse than that, American girls are
allowed to pick out their own asso-
clates, and make their own selections
Of friends, and half the time the mother
and father don't know even by sight
the girls and boys with whom their
daughters are spending their time.
Many a man meets his daughters
fance for the first time after the de-
tails of the wedding are settled, and
there Is no chance of even to protest,
no matter how unworthy the young
man is.
Surely there was never such incon-
sistency in love as this, that we wor-
ship our daughters, and yet fail to pro-
tect them. We indulge them in every
extravaganza, and create tastes that,
ungratifled, become a shirt of Nessus
10 torture them; and yet we nave no
dowry system to provide them against
want There can be no doubt that the
reason that America leads the world
in divorces is because of the way our
girls are raised. They are allowed to
use their own immature judgment
about picking out a husband, without
one word of parental help and we won
der that they so often make mistakes.
They have been carefully shielded
from every particle of responsibility
and all knowledge of domestic econo-
my, and we wonder why they cannot
manage a household. They have been
INDUCED in extravaganza, and we won
der that they are dissatisfied when they
marry a poor man and have to econo-
nize. They have been queens on pc
destals, and we wonder that they are
miserable when they are expected to
step down and be helpmeets. And the
paradox of the thing is that all this
was done in love for the girl! Hate
could have done no more.
But with all the faults of the Ameri-
can girl--and they are of our making
We owe her debt of gratitude, for she
mas been one of the principal forces
that have made for the general social
uplift. From all over the country just
now thousands of girls are going home
from women's colleges and female
academies and seminaries, and they
make vast army of missionaries who
Will carry sweetness and light with