Year: 1873

SCHOOLS FOX THE GIRLS.


In view of the opening of all kinds of schools
in this first week of September, we put the
question the other day to parents as to the
soundest and most efficient training to be given
to boys. 1t was from no lack of appreciation
of their Importance that we said nothing about
the girls, or the myriad schools which are
open on every side waiting and ready to bring
them up into women, wives, and mothers, of
every class and degree, from the staid re-
served model of department, trained by Mo-
ravan sisters, to the rouged and jeweled
society women, who are seen in embryo at
matinees, smiling in rows, whispering with
bad English and bad French from some
fashionable boarding school. Women are more
plastic than men the girl is always nodded
more OF less by circumstances, which the boys
tougher fiber pushes through and casts aside
unnOtced. The young man thrusts and works
his way out of an ungenal iron-ruled home, and
in the friction of his broader life learns to look
back on it with goOd-humored indulgence,
while his sister has wilted and shrunk in its
unkindy air into hard cynical old maiden
hood.


The pretty apple-cheeked little maidens be-
ginning school this week, will very probably
remember nothing ten years hence of the sines
and tangents, the syllogisms, symphonies, and
arias which fill their brains now; but they
will testify in every movement OF body and
mind to the influence of the manners and
opinions of their favorite teacher. 1t is hardly
possible to Oyer-estimate the effect which
woman teacher with any personal magnetism
can exert upon her scholars. We have known
Young girls in converts kneel and kiss the
ground where the shadow of some faVOrite
Sister Agnes or Baptista had fallen.
girls first love is, in fact usually
woman and in this case the mystery and
sanctity of a VOW and cOnsecrated garb
were added to the charm, the absurd enthusi-
asms of this first blind belief. In consequence
of this impressbility. the girl is educated not
by books so much as by the atmosphere of
the home or school, and the two or three
salient examples of human nature, after which
or opposed to which she models herself In
choosing a school for the innocent little girl
who heretofore has ruled absolutely over her
kingdom of father mother, and brothers, it is
this more subtle, ineffaceable teaching that
should be taken into account, rather than the
textbooks. If she come back to them
skilled in chopping logic and impregna-
BILE in dates and theories, what will
it matter if the delicate bloom, the
innate high breeding which simplicity and
truthfuness gave her be lost in loud and
fast vulgarity and fashionable deceitf Lat
terly, at least in appearance, we are wisely
going back to the old guarded training for
our girls. The young daughters of good fam
lilies no longer crowd the ears on their way to
school, appalling grave spectators with their
loud dressing and louder manners. They are
duennaed on the street by b0nRe, or groom,
or governess, There is much to be said of
the advantages of innocence which is clear
and open-eyed, but the innocence of ignorance
is not to be despised; and little of it could
be introduced into the modern education of
American and English fashionable girls with
profit.


The second point in the training of a girl
should be to discover what special gift or
talent she has, if any. and whatever her cir
cumstances, to fit her for its use. Even putting
the money value of such art or accomplish
ment out of the question, its aid as resource
and strengthened is incaculable. DlsappOint-
ment and grief come more easily to women
than to men they abide with them longer,
and sap more of their life away, simply be-
cause they need the tonic of hard enjoyable
work-not the mere drudgery of the bread
winner but the toll of the artist. Pride,
philosophy even religion, cannot give the new
vitality which such work bestows on the faithful
votary 1t repairs bodily and mental forces
like Nature itself, slowly, imperceptlbly, surely.
The father and mother who can find in their
daughter such power, and give to her the
means of using it, may count themselves happy
and her tho inheritOr of a royal heritage.