THE OLD-FASHIONED GIRL.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2166, 3 February 1881, Page 4

THE OLD-FASHIONED GIRL.

She flourished thirty or forty year* ago. She was a little .girl until she was fifteen. She used to help her mother wash the dishes and beep the kitchen tidy, and she had an ambition to make pies so nicely that papa could not tell the difference between them and mumnsi'i,; and yet she could fry griddle cakes at ten years of age, and darn her own stockings before she was twelve, to say nothing of knitting them herself. She had her hours of play, and enjoyed herself to the fullest extent. She had no very costly toys to be sure, but her rag doll and little bureau and chair that uncle Tom made were os valuable to her as the SOdol. wax doll and elegant doll furniture the children have nowadays. She never said “I can’t ■*’ and “I don’t want to ” to her mother when asked to leave her play and run upstairs or down on an .errand, because she had not been brought up in that way. Obedience was a cardinal virtue 1 in the old-fashioned little girl. She rose in the morning when oho was called, and went out into the garden and saw the dew on the grass, and if she lived in the country she fed the chickens and hunted up the eggs for breakfast. We do not suppose that she had her hair in curl papers or crimping pins, or had it “ banged ” over her forehead, aud her flounces were no trouble to her.

She learned to sew by making patchwork, and wo dare say she could do an “ over-and-over” seam as well as nine-tonthf of the grown-up women nowadays.

The old-faahioned little girl did not grow into a young lady and talk about beaux before abe waa in her teena, and she did not read dime novels, and she waa not fancying a hero in every ploughboy she met. She learned the aolid accomplishments aa she grew up. She was taught the arts of cooking and housekeeping. When she got a husband she know how to cook him a dinner. She was not learned in French verbs or Latin declensions, and her near neighbours were spared the agony of hearing her pound out “ The Maiden’s Prayer ” and “ Silver threads among the gold” twenty times a day on the piano, but we have no doubt aho made her family quite as comfortable aa the modern young lady does hera. It may be a vulgar assertion, and wo suppose that we are not exactly up with the times, but we honestly believe, and our own opinion is based on considerable experience, and no small opportunity for observation, that when it comes to keeping a family happy a good cook and housekeeper is to be greatly preferred above an accomplished scholar. When both seta of qualities are found together, as they sometimes are, then is the household over which such a woman has control blessed. The old fashioned little girl was modest in her demeanor, and she never talked slang or used by-words. She did not laugh at old people or make fun of cripples, as we saw some modern girls doing the other day. She bod respect for elders, and was not above listening to words of counsel from those older than herself. She did not think she knew as much as mother, and that her judgment was as good as her grandmother’s. She did not go to parties by the time she was ten, and stay till after midnight playing euchre and dancing with any chance young man who happened to be present. She went to bed in season, end doubtless said her prayers before she went, and slept the sleep of innocence, and rose_ up in the morning happy and capable of giving happiness. And if there bo an old-fashioned little girl in the world to-day, may heaven bless her and keep her, and raise up others like her. — “ N.Y, Examiner.”