THE MODERN MINX.

Matamata Record, Volume VI, Issue 493, 29 November 1923, Page 1

THE MODERN MINX.

“You liavp no soul!” disapproved the Minx’s aunt. . “I don’t want one!” was tile reply. “If you go übOjUtir,' having fueling? they’re apt to get/hurt." It is one ot the chief complaints about the modern girl that she is hard, and that her craze for realism has robbed her of much of that simple charm that was so delightful in tho romantic Victorian maiden. Youth is always a little hard, ami a little cruel, but not more so now than it was fifty years ago. Thu Modern Minx is as easily wounded and ns ready with her impetuous sym pathy as was her grandmother. That she has a wider range of information about men and women than would have been considered "nice” in the eighties is less her fault than her heritage. She has been allowed and encouraged to explore fields ot knowledge that her parents, suddenly a ware that ignorance is not Innocence, wore themselves denied. The girl of to-day does not see hot friends through a romantic haze as “ladies” and "gentlemen,” but as men and women, whoso physical proportions she survoys with- a critical and candid eye, and whoso mental achievements are of intense interest to her She builds castles in tho air, bill they aro more goneral and less personal than they would be if she cultivated a soul and her own feelings. As for the romance of her heart, she loves as deeply and as trustingly in golfing kit as she would have done In a crinoline, and tho modern couples who fill the divorce courts arc only the same people who, before publicity was so idealised, would have amused themselves with clandestine intrigues. They are no worse and no bettor. Tile modern girl has a far more difficult and responsible life before her than had her predecessors, and if her manners and conversation are freer than one could wish, and if she appears impervious to the criticism of kor elders, she.,is .not really the stony person she appears. , Her luiowledgo of life is wider, and the demand on her sympathies is in crossed proportionately. She is not left in blissful ignorance of the squalor of slums and tho evils of overcrowding, and slio will, eventually, have some sharo in helping to put these things right. Little time is left for concentration on plans for her own happiness, and she is therefore not cnsily hurt 6n her own account, though tho sorrows of others touch, her deeply and quickly. Minx though she is, she means to leave tho world a hotter place than sho found it.