Honolulu star-bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1912-2010, 1917-11-30
THE ROUGH DIAMOND
BY DOROTHY DIX,
The Worlds Highest Paid Woman
Writer.

- ERE is a queer case in which my
advice has been asked:
u A Young man is in love-with a
pretty girl who has many admirable
: qualities. of character. but execrable
manners. She sprawls in uncouth at
ritudes as she sits. She eats like
savage She does not even understand
the proper use of a handkerchief, and
she lacks all the little refinements and
daintiness that one thinks Of as being
instructive with wSmen.
In spite of all this, the young man
is still fascinated with the girl, and he
wants to know if there is any way IN
which she may be taught the conven.
tional rsages of good society and to
corduct he1S,e1f in refined manner.
aOf course there is. The one remedy
for a case like this is for the girl to
be taken away from her family and
senI to some good school, where they
make specially of polishing up rough
diamonds Or, if the girl is too old
to so to school, the same end could
be attained by putting her in the care
of some gentiewoman who would teach
her the bearing and manners Of a
lady.
All of this would be a process ex-
ceedingly painful to the subject, how
ever, and it could only be successful
if the girl realized her deficiencies and
was eager and anxious to correct them.
There have been innumeraR1e in
stances Of girls whose early lives had
been spent in the backwoods, or
among rude and uncultured people.
who have gone into finishing school
Doors and come out Of them the glass
Of fashion and the mould of form.
But these were girls. who were will
ing to sacrifice their vanity on the
altar of their progress, who begged to
have their faults pointed out in order:
to correct them, and who -subordinated
their coneeit Of themselves to their
ambition.
Women are initiative by nature. 1t
does not take them long to change
from being chambermaids to count
esses, or to pick up an accent, or the
latest way of doing things. This makes
it possible for Cinderella to be her
own fairy godmother and change her
self from the kitchen drudge to tie
belle of the ball in the twinkling Of an
eye if she makes up her mind to pen
form this miracle. But the important
thing is that she desire to change and
become the princess. ..-.
Certainly it does not indicate that
girl has much power of observation or
much ambition if she has permitted
herself to grow up with clownish man.
ners in the midst of a modern city
where she is presented with continual
object lessons Of the way in which
people of intelligence and refinement
dress and conduct themselves.
But why, in a world full of pearls
of girls, should young man pick out
this rough diamond for a wife? Of
one thing he may be sure, and that
is that if her manners CRATE on his
sensibilities before he is married to
her, they will be intolerable when he
has to contemplate them every day.
1t is the little peculiarities of those
with whom we live that get upon our
nerves, so that the way that some one
always clears his: throat before speak
ing, or the noise that another makes
as she drinks her coffee, or the eternal
creak of another's shoes, or the per-
petual shifting Of another becomes
harder TO forgive than would the com.
mission of some actual crime.
If she committed half the sins on
the calendar she would not be so
loathsome to a scrupulously tubbed
and scrubbed neat man as is a dirty
and slovenly wife, nor are mans
spotted morals any more repulsive to a
dainty woman than man who drib-
bles soup and gravy over his clothes
as he eats.