THE MAIDEN'S PROGRESS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue XV, 25 November 1880, Page 4

THE MAIDEN'S PROGRESS.

(N.Z.Mail),

All who are interested in ihe English race must view with considerable misgiving the. change wich is coming over Ergiiah girls. The question is a serious one, Bnd Ihe consequences may be in the last degree deplorable. If the boy be father to the man, the girl fa undoubtedly mother, and with influences far more potent for good or evil. The maidenß of this generation will be the mothers of the next. Will they be patient, loveable, salf-scari-ficing, of pare mind and healthy constitution, possessing the finest qualities of the perfect woman, of the typical mother, ' that holiest thing alive'? The answer, it is to be feared, roust be give in the negative. Neither the moral nor physical training of modern English girls .is Buch as to justify the hope that they will be invariably above reproach. The lives they lead, the lessens they learn, the aims set before them,, all tend to degeneracy and deterioration. f lhey ere permitted a3 thpy grow up to develop all the lesser vices unchecked. They sre subjected to unwholesome physical processes calculated to work as much mischief to their bodies as evil counsels tmd bad examples will do to their minds. They are allowed a freedom from restraint, sn independent broadness of speech, a latitude in thought and action, which might easily lapse into worse, and drive them across the slight barrier which nowadays separates propriety from i(B opposite. The progress of our modern maidens, like that of the bad apprentice, is downward from the first. They come nuder the influence of vicious treatment almost in their cradles. Vanity and frivolity they absorb with their mother's milk; While still the merest infante, they acquire a passion for dress ; their earliest prattle is of furbelow and flounce ; their first jojb to appear in scoart clothes, like their elders, with wide sashes of satin or silk, with laced pinafores, and big rosettes in their shoes. The paramount importance of personal charms is dinned into their ears long before they leave Ihe echool-room j and they learn early to appraise and appreciate those which they flatter themselves they really possess. The silly people who surround them foster and fan this into a constantly glowing flame. Girls, to compass beauty or its counterfeit, will cheerfully lend themselves to the tormentors, and gladly, face present torture and future injury if they think their appearance will thereby be improved. There can be found no more grievous example of this than in the rage for tight-lacing, which the litest fashion with its development of •the figure* has recently brought so much in vogue. A well-authenticated case is on record of a mother who, being dissatisfied with the size of her daughter's waist, at that time aged twelve, persuaded her, nothing loath, to : wear perpetually a pair of stays fashioned like a cuirass, but with a padlock always fastened, of which the mother kept the key. The husbands, possibly of professional beauties, at any rate of wives of whose appearance they were proud, have been known to personally superintend the process of lacing, insisting ruthlessly upon the reduction of rebellious contours, and prepared to reeoit to mechanical appliances in order to bring the circumference of the waiet within the limits of a span. Other men, not only

near relatives, but that large host of admirers whose approval is grateful to every daughter of Eve, exercise indirectly the same pernicious influence by according praise only io the most monstrous distortion of the human form divine. What are the tortures and discomforts undergone by the wretched victims to this false standard of beauty, they themselves alone can tell. But we may form some conception of it by observing any sylph-like figure as she passes up the street in her skin-tight garments, walking painfully in her narrow - pointed high - heeled shoes, whioh disturb the balance of her body, and. destroy all grace of gait. If fatigue overtakes her, as it assuredly will, she muy hail a cab; but Bhe is—the curious observer may notice this any day for himself— far too tightly trussed to be able to lift her foot on to the step; and will have to choose between dismissing the cabman or being lifted into her seat. Follow her a dozen yards farther and you will probably notice her turn aeide, oslentensibly to look into a 6hop window, but really to gather strength from her smelling-salts, and thus avoid fainting in the streets. Nor do these horrible and more immediate inconvenience* iucn up the pernicious effect of this abominable fact of tight-lacing which is now carried to such dangerous excess, tbe more remote, but inevitable consequences are absolutely fatal to health. Modern fashion is a hideous Moloch, and the maiden vowed to its worship is doomed. She may escape for a time; but the germs of the disease are there, and will some day come to rapid maturity. The trutls of medical science, if sought out, will convey an awful warning, which tbe most reckless could not fail to lay to heart. This artificial constriction of tbe waist is a foul misusage of the human frames and the penalty is malformation and utter disorganisation of ihe internal organs. It will inevitably lead to a series of terrible maladies, will superihduoe premature old age, and perhaps end in an early death. Possibly the enumeration of these physical evils may serve to frighten those responsible for them, and in due course tend to work their cure. But their removal must be accompanied by more enlightened moral treatment, if we would check effectually our maidens' downward descent. If their frail bodies are oruelly treated, so also are their minds. Mothers are sometimes culpably neglectful, more often they do irreparable mischief by suffering their daughters to see and hear, even take part ir, everything that goes on. The little girl may listen at first without harm to doubtful conversation ; but she will soon develop precocious quickness of apprehension. Bhe may not grasp the exact meaning of flirtation ; but, like all obildren, she is imitative, and she will soon understand how to use her eyeß. LoDg before she is introduced and out in the world she will have mastered the use of the weapons she is to handle against mankind. The education miy have been imperceptible; more probably it has been stimulated by the vicious help of personal example* The blushing debutante, in whom we look for guileless innocence and simple ignorance of the world and its ways, is already deeply versed in them. Her further progress is certainly not towards improvement. Within a season or two she will have distinctly deteriorated. She has realised that to succeed she must continue to appeal to (he senses of men. Just

as the pernicious teaching and treatment of childhood have led her to em* phaaise and make the most of her personal attractions, so has later experience counselled her to be free and unrestrained in manners, hardi in conversation, eager at all cost to please, A prudent marriage to a sensible man might still arrest her downward career; but sensible men are not too numerous, and the few there are would scarcely choose her for a wife. But she is by this time almost entirely unfitted for marriage. Maternity would bring her few joys ; and she would be nearly disqualified for, if not quite useless in, the sacred functions of a mother. She would be little likely to prove a true helpmate, but might certainly be expected to pass over to that increasing contingent of frieky matrons who are already bringing discredit to the Victorian age. It is but a step thenoo to (he scandal of the divorce court, and the last fatal fall.