The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-10-19
GRACE OF MANNER WANTED.
A Plea for Improvement in English
 Women-Wherein They Fail.

Women-W Wherein They Fail
 We are not prepared, as rule, to admit that our grandmothers, and their mothers before them, were very wise in their respective generations, but at least we are bound to acknowledge that they certainly much better understand in those days ho wto produce and cul- tivate grace of manner and bearing in girls than we do now. We have gymnasia, which they had not; we are taught physical culture on the latest scientific principles-of this they un- derstood nothing.
 Our girls live in the open air, walk, bicycle, motor, play all manner of athletic games, while their grand mothers and great-grandmothers were reared like hothouse plants.
 We no longer squeeze in our waists or try to keep our feet small, as thhey did, and yet, withal, the horrible truth must be admitted and faced that we possess none of their grace, that our department is faulty, and that the pretty lines of face and figure which all women of gentle birth possessed half century or more have not come to us.
 And, finally, that we are sadly de- ficient in the courtesy which then seemed woman's natural attribute, but which, as matter of fact, was taught her from babyhood, like stitehery and the use of the globes. Something must be rotten in the state of Dem mark to have brought about the un- gracefulness of the modern girl, and as we are always drilling, massaging and developing ourselves. it is becom- ing abundantly clear that we are alto- gether on the wrong track, and that our so much despised and pited for bears did know a great deal more than We do about training up a girl in the graceful way she should go, and turn her out a courteous, charming woman.
 What we really lack, nowadays, is department. Our girls never learn this at home, at school, or in the dancing class. What girl is now taught haW to come into a room, to, enter and leave a carriage with grace, to make q bow properly, to move everywhere with ease and yet display her figure to the best advantage? Few. modern women can walk, or dance, or stand, hold up their skirts, greet their friends by an inclination of the head or grasp of the hand in a thoroughly graceful fashion, yet even we see for ourselves what care is taken to drill and how they have been physically trained till they had grown alarmingly big. This then is not FrN t1n ho5 oDn Xxfn arr again to have a race of women who can carry themselves we'll, impress other nations by their gentleness and graceful bearing, and restore. to Eng land the "cultivated'' manner, we shall most certainly have to hark back to the methods of the old fashioned schoolmistresses and teachers of de- pertinent, keep our girls from over. much hockey, and insist that they shall be '1adylike" above all things We shall, doubtless, have a hard fight to get back to this state of affairs. The modern girl is very much out of hand at present, and, like Harriet, who fa- tally played with matches, she twill not take advice" but one has hopes that there will be a reaction, and in due course we shall revert to the old methods of teaching the art of feminine grace.
 There is no reason why physical eul- ture and all outdoor exercises should not have due regard to them, but in combination we must rigidly enforce ease of movement, quietness of man ner; together with certain formality less self-consciousness and less speed general offhandedness.-Fro the La dies Pictorial.