The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1906-03-03
GRACE OF MANNER WANTED.

ADMIT tnat our gTanQmOtnerS, anO
their mothers before them, were very
wise in their respective generations,
but at least we are bound to acknow-
ledge that they certainly much better
understood in those days how to pro-
duce and cultivate 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 understood nothing.
Our girls live in theopen air, walk,
bicycle, motor, play all manner of
athletic games, while their grand
mothers and great-grandmothers were
reared like dollhouse plants.
We no longer squeeze in our waists
or try to keep our feet small, as they
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 fig
ure which all women of gentle birth
possessed half century or more ago
have not come to us.
And, finally, that we are sadly de-
6cient in the courtesy which then
seemed woman's natural attribute,
but which as a matter of fact, was
taught her from babyhood, like
stitchery and the use of the globes.
Something must be rotten in the
state of Denmark to have brought
about the ungracefulness of the mod
ern girl, and as we are always drilling,
massaging and developing ourselves,
it is becoming abundantly clear that
we are altogether on the wrong track
and that our so much despised and
pitied forbears did know great deal
more than we do about training up
girl in the graceful way she should
go, and turning her out courteous,
charming woman.
What we really lack, nowadays, is
department. Our girls never learn
this at home, at school, or in the dane
ing class. What girl is now taught
how to come into room, to enter and
leave carriage with grace, to make
a 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 thoroughly graceful
fashion, yet even we see for ourselves
what care is taken taken to drill them
and how they have been physically
trained till they have grown alarm
ingly big. This then is not the way
to do it, and if ever we are again to
have a race of women who can carry
themselves we'll, impress other ma
tions by their gentleness and graceful
bearing and restore to England the
cultivated" manner, we shall most
certainly have to bark back to the
methods of the old fashioned school
mistresses and teachers ofdeportment,
keep our girls from overmuch hockey,
and insist that they shall be LADY
like above all things. We shall
doubtless, have hard fight to get
back to this state Of affairs. The
modern girl is very much out ofhand
at present, and like Harriet, who ia
tally played with matches, she twill
not take ADVICE" but one has hopes
that there will be reaction, and in
due course we shall revert to the old
methods of teaching the art of femi-
nine grace.
There is no reason why physical
culture and all outdoor exercise should
not have due regard paid to them,
but in combination we must rigidly
enforce ease of movement, quietness
of manner, together with certain
formality less self-consciousness and
less speed and general offhandedness.
-T.n1zes' Pictorial.