The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-06-25
NORTHERN MEN AND WOMEN.
As viewed by a Southern Woman and Contrasted With Southerners.

As viewed by a Southern Woman and
 Contrasted With southerners.
 On the whole, think there Is a great CT difference between the character and disposition of the men than between the women of the two sections. These Yankee gentlemen have nonchalance, a power of personal subtraction that Is maddening to the Southerner, who has at least as much temperament as he has brains. They are not natural, as are Southern men. but they have been carefully made by their ancestors, pre- destined and produced. And unless one is acquainted with the process. he is never likely to comprehend thoroughly the man that results from it. They do not even get their convictions as we do, from experience, but from books and
 university courses. They have a sys-
 tenn of thought that reaches from the
 slums to the remotest solar systems, and the whole thing is academic,
 theoretical! And their leading eccentri- city consists in an energetic determine
 tion to govern by it, whether it meets
 the actual conditions in the world about them or not. They show the same tena- city in holding these book and univer- sity theories that southerners do in pre- serving their tried and proved pre- judices.
 I was prepared to find an even great CT difference between Northern and
 Southern women. But am forced to
 the conclusion that American women
 are essentially the same everywhere.
 They only differ in manifestations. In
 the North, for instance, they are frank
 rather than coquettish. At the same
 time they are personally more reserved, less confidential than we are in personal
 topics Of conversation than we have.
 They gre more interested in the world at large and less interested in them
 selves. think this may grow out of
 the fact that they are not noticed as much or approved as often and gallant
 ly as women are in the South. Indeed,
 they are apparently without that self
 consciousness which limits our ways
 from the glance of an eye to the length
 of a step. This leads to what we should
 consider the most astonishing results.
 1 accounted on this basis for the native
 exposure of feminine legs on Fifth av-
 enue. When I was in New York re- gently saw many sober maids, matrons
 and grandmatrons walking there with
 skirts lifted as high as if they had been
 wading through three feet of water. I
 conclude that cold indifference to their neither extremities arose not from lack of modesty, but from the evident in- difference of the public. However, if women showed such economy of skirts in any Southern city, enough excite ment and enthusiasm could be gener- ated along that street by the sight to lengthen self-consciousness down to her
 boot heels very quickly.
 I do not know if social life in the North is more or less elastic than it is
 in the South, but evidently it is less exists between romance and reality than we admit. Love affairs are openly confessed and apparently receive re- cognition. a general sanction that we permit only near the end of an engage ment. At the same time was told that it is not admissible for a man to make love- to a woman unless he is lin earn est" To us, whose vocation consists largely in a coquettish dexterity at par rying the gallant speeches of our man. kind, this seems an unreasonable, pro- saic hardship. And this reminds me of
 another impressive characteristic of Northern men; they are not rude, but they are unconscious of how much and how cunningly women differ from men. ] I recall in this connection long walk with a gentleman who is a product
 rather than an exponent of New Eng land. He was an excellent comrade, but he allowed me to crawl over a stone fence, snake through a thicket of l briars and up a hill one-quarter of a
 mile steep without ever offering me the l least assistance. Had a Southern man treated me in this fashion I should have died of exhaustion and indignation. As it was I climbed the situation with a fortftude that have never showed be- fore or since. I felt humorous ex- | hilaration in conforming to his strenu- ous notions of sex.
 These are some of my first impress sious of the North. More. particularly
 I was amazed at the indefatigable ener- | gy Of these people. What we know as leisure is an experience they can never have. They have no capacities for rest. | ing. Their brains have been wound up | by 200 years of industrious living and 1 they never run down." I was with a | party of New York people in Connecti- | cut who thought they were taking a