The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-03-24

Washington Times
 The American girl has almost entire ly dispensed with her chaperon. At first she took the dear old lady along, sat her safely off In a quiet corner. and patiently bore with her, because her English cousins did not think 1t quite well. because nice English girls were never seen anywhere without a chape- ron, you know.
 The chaperon. like real furs. a fam fly tree and knowledge of the correct thing. serves to distinguish the society girl from the other girl in England. But not for long. would the American girl take dictation in the matter of her manners, and now she goes about with only her maid or a man friend to par les and dances.
 Yet, in the passing of the chaperon the American girl loses the biggest gun in her artillery of attractions. A chaperon never was needed. of course. to guard her morals or her manners. nor to make a gentleman behave like a gentleman in her company. That was absurd. But what a beautiful wall she made for love to leap over! Whispered nothings. stolen glances and subtle flirtations will go quite out of fashion, now that a man no longer needs to whisper his nothings, but can say them right out loud. look at a girl as much and as tenderly as he pleases, and need not exercis. the least sub tlety in his flirtations
 Kept Man at His Distance. The chaperon was the little innocent garden fence surrounding the rose, and thereby making her seem doub1y at- tractive. She kept the man at his dis tance. and that distance lent enchant- ment. Anything which is fenced in, which Is difficult to reach, which must be sought after, climbed after and fi- nally stolen, as we all know, is doubly | as attractive as the things which are | right at hand and only have to be picked up.
 Just so the shy glances of the bud | shot stealthily out beneath the very | nose of the dragon chaperoa, were | twice as fascinating as the perfectly nonchalant flirtations of the unchaper- | oned girl. Indeed. the. unchaperoned girl doesn't dare give so many glances nor listen to so many pretty nothings nor appear so coquettish as did the | guarded young lady of the chaperon days. She must be doubly circumspect now that she Is responsible for herself. She has no one on whom to cast the | burden of her follies. She must be | wise and self-contained and self-suf- ficient. And these are by no means | the qualities which make a girl most | attractive.
 | A boy will pass right by the pond. fin his own back yard to go swimming in the stony brook where he has been for | bidden to swim. The same masculine instinct makes every man look with twice the interest at the girl who is guarded by>a forbidding looking chap | eron as he would display for the girl whom he may talk to and flirt with as much as he pleases
 Foil to Girls Pink Cheeks. | Besides what a beautiful foil to the fresh looking girl. with pink cheeks and retrousse nose was the withered old chaperon with the forty-two-inch waist Everything Is beautiful or ugly by comparison, and a pretty young girls charms are doubled by q com
 parison with the faded maturity of the
 dear old chaperon.
 Wise mamas understood the value O,
 this and completely sacrificed them
 selves to their daughters interests
 They knew how to lead the converse.
 ton into channels where Mirabella
 could talk interestingly: they knew
 how to bring these about SO that .lIra.
 bella should find herself seated at the
 piano at the right moment. In fact
 they knew how to transform them.
 selves into effective settings in which
 the little bud shOne to the very hos,
 advantage.
 Nowadays Mirabella must sit in the
 drawing-room with the lights going at
 full blast and nobody asking her tc
 play and nobody helping her over the
 stony path of conversation and no-
 body guarding her like the dragon al
 the gate of the enchanted palace.
 Indeed. girl without a chaperon
 Is as commonplace a person in the
 fairyland of love as a princess without
 dragon might be in the real fairy
 land.