The Savannah morning news., 1904-05-29
A GIRLS HERO.

cense before some demi-god, or some
little tin-god that she endOws with
heroic attributes. At times this causes
her 10 make many kinds of a fool OF
herself as for instance when she kiss
ed the too-sweet IIobson into oblivion,
and mobbed Paderewski TO obtain a
single precious hair from his flowing
locks.
In the main. however. 1t is an ami
able weakness. and her ability to glor-
1fy an ordinary man-for woman's
genuhections are always made before
a masculine shrine-and see in him an
unappreciative genius or a knight Of
romance, not only adds to the inter-
est of life, but enables her to actual
~ enjoy being sacrificed 10 her dtvin-
ity. This is a most valuable faculty,
and it's possession explains many fem
mime Inconsistencies and peculiarities,
AS long as a man is heroic in wom-
ans eyes she will stand any sort Of
treatment from him. 1t Is only when
she discovers that her idols feet are
mud that she hauls him into the di-
vorce court, or otherwise rebels ac-
cording to her relationship to him.
Ii must not he thought though, that
women are constant from youth to age
TO the same hero. on the contrary
procession of heroes file through their
fancies, so to speak, and the different
types of men that a woman worships
at different periods Of her life offer an
interesting and instructive study
A girls first attack comes on early
while she is stin little tot in short
skirts and with her hair in pig-talls
down her back The inspiIer is in
variably some big boy who attracts her
attention by turning cart-wheels be-
fore her on the pavement, or cutting
figures of eight on the ice, or VINO
can conceal the half of an apple in MS
bullying cheek when the teacher turns
an Investigating glance upon NM
She looks on with awe and admlrd-
ton at his feat, and thinks how strong,
and clever and wonderful he IS ana
betrays her adulation by hanging about
him as much as the Great one VIII
permit, taking meekly his snubs, aud
chalking his name up TO fame on the
bill boards as she goes to and from
school This is merely a juvenile COM
plant, as inocuous as the chicken
pox, and it passes harmlessly without
leaving a scar upon the heart.
The next hero of little girl is the
Fairy Prince. and little as the man so
honored may realize or appreciate IL,
this is one of the most wonderful eA-
perienees that can ever come to him,
for to be worshipped by the pure heart
of little child is to be a king among
men. The Fairy Prince is always
grown-up generally either a college
friend of an older brother, or a sutton
of a big sister, but he takes note of the
child and talks to her, and brings her
candies, or takes her riding or TO the
theater and she admires him for it. In
her eyes he is an Apollo of beauty,
marvel of wit and wisdom. the hero OF
all her childish imaginings. II is then,
for the first time, that love and mar
rage enter into her conceptions of life,
and she dreams of herself as going
away with the Fairy Prince to live in
a candy castle, and feed upon chocolate
creams for ever and a day. When the
Fairy Prince finally rides away and
leaves her, she sheds salt and bitter
tears, and refuses to be comforted by
his promise to come back for her when
she gets grown.
After the Fairy Prince has gone the
way of all masculine flesh and married,
there are several years in which the
girl is immune from hero worship. She
scorns the gruby little boys of her own
age Her horizon is limited and no
knight of romance appears upon II, and
so she arrives at the age of 16 or II
when the feminine passion for hero
worship becomes an acute peril, for
there is no telling then when she will
be idiot enough to try to translate some
of her imaginations into reality. The
gentleman who wears the halo at this
period of a girls life is generally her
professor Preferably he is her music
teacher, or drawing master, but it
doesn't much matter for at this stage
of the game her appetite for heroes is
so voracious that she can swallow any
thing, even a grumpy professor of
mathematics. Give her a hollow-chest-
ed and aenemic teacher. with lanky
hair and broken English verbs, and she
can see in him an unappreciated genius,
pinng away in an alien land, and PIC
ture herself as a benign angel coming
into his lonely life, bearing love and
sympathy in one hand, and bag of her
fathers good long green in the other,
and thus lifting him into a region of
ease and plenty, where his art would
have opportunity for free expression.
If, on the contrary, the professor is
fat, and middle aged, and bald, it jars
her ideals but it does not smash them.
She knows that he must be unhappily
married, and she has visions of shud-
dering ecstacy in which she imagines
herself as his affinity, renouncng love
Tor duty, both victims of fate vet lead
ing a sad sweet life of resignation up
lifted by a glorious passion. OF course,
the worship of the professor will be
easily explained on the ground that he
is generally the only man in sight in
girls boarding school, 1t is, however,
extremely dangerous. and no man who
is not a septuagenarian, and deaf, and
dumb, and blind to boot, ought ever to
be employed to teach girls.
The next hero that a girl worships is
the preacher. Every boy goes through
period when he yearns to be a bloody
pirate of the raging main, or train
robber. or some kind of picturesque
bandit. Similarly, girls pass through
stage in which they long to re-
nounce the world, and all its vanities
and pomps, and become sweet faced
sisters of charity or gray robed hos
pital nurses, or settlement workers
with uplfted expressions and year
before-last clothes.
These noble aspirations are inspired
by a good looking preacher, for il is
notable that the piety of the feminine
portion of a congregation is always in
direct ratio to the personality OF the
clergyman. Under it's influence a girl
goes to church three times a day, pre-
fers prayer meetings to balls, and reg