Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-07-09
NORTHERN MEN AND WOMEN
As Viewed by Southern Woman and
 Contrasted with Southerners.

As Viewed by Southern Woman and
 Contrasted with Southerners.
 On the whole I think there is a greater difference between the char acter and disposition of the men than between the women of the two sections. These Yankee gentlemen have non- chalance, power of personal subtrac- tion that Is maddening to the south erner, who at least has as much tenn perament as he has brains. They are
 not natural as are the southern men, l but they have been carefully made by their ancestors, predestined and pro- duced. And unless one is acquainted with the process, he is never likely to comprehend thoroughly the man that that results from it. They do nat even get their convictions as we do from ex- perience. but from books and univer- sity courses. They have a system of thought that reoches from the slums to the remotest solar systems. and the whole thing is academic. theoretical! And their leading eccentricity consists in an energetic determination to gov ern by it, whether it meet the actual conditions in the world about them or not. They show the same tenacity in holding these book and university the ories that .southerners do in preserv- | ing their tried and proved prejudices.
 I was prepared to find an even great CT difference between northern and ] southern women. But I am forced to the conclusion that American women are essentially the same everywhere. They only differ in manifestations. Tn 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 per- sonal topics of conversation that we have They are more interested in the world at large and less interested in themselves think this may grow out of the fact that they are not mo- ticed as much or approved as often l and gallantly as women are in the south. Indeed. they are apparently { without that self consciousness which 1 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. accounted on this basis for the native exposure of feminine legs on Fifth avenue. When was in New York recently saw many sober maids, matrons and grandmatrons walking there with skirts lifted as high as if they had been wading through three feet or water. conclude their cold indiner- ence to their neither extremities arose not from a lack of modesty, but from the evident indifference of the public. However. if a woman showed such economy of skirts in any southern city enough excitement and enthusiasm could be generated along the street by the sight to 1engthen self-conscious- ness down to her boot heels very quickly.
 I do not know if social life in the north is more or less elastic than 1t is in the south, but evidently it is less formal in some ways. A closer rela- tion exists between romance and reali- ty than we admit. Love affairs are openly confessed. and apparently re ceive recognition, general sanction that we permit only near the end of an enga cement. At the same time I was told that it Is not admissible for man to make love" to a woman unless he is Gin earnest To us, whose vocation consists largely in q coQuet- tish dexterity in parrying the gallant speeches of our mankind, this seems to to be an unreasonable, prosaic hard ship. And this reminds me of another impressive characteristic of northern men; they are not rude, but they are unconscious of how much and how cun- ningly women differ from men. I re- call in this connection a long walk with 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 stone fence, snake through thicket of briars and up a hin one-quarter of a mile steep without ever offering me the least assistance. Had a southern man treated me in this fashion I should have died of exhaustion and fndigna- tion. AS it was I climbed the situa- tion with a fortitude that I have never showed before or since. I felt a hu- morous exhilaration in conforming to his strenuous notions of sex.
 These are some of my first impress sions of the north. More particularly I was amazed at the indefatigable en- ergy of these people. What we know as leisure is an experience they can never have. They have no capacities for resting. Their brains have been wound up by 200 years of industrious living and they never run down." I was with party of New York people in Connecticut who thought they were taking a vacation. Now with us va cation is kind of Nirvana experience. We take our holiday lying fiat upon our backs. We go into romantic trance along with the summer wealth CT. But these men and women showed more zeal in their effort to amuse themselves than southerners do when they are leading a strenuous lifew- New York Tpdepandapt