AMERICAN GIRLS ABROAD.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5197, 17 November 1877, Page 2 (Supplement)

AMERICAN GIRLS ABROAD.

1 (From London Truth.) I take it that there are as many pretty girls in England as in the United States. Then why is it that the eye is more attracted in watering places by American than by English girls ? The reason is that Americal girls know how to dress, and English girls are devoid of all notion of this most praiseworthy accomplishment. I am not speaking now of irreclaimable dowdy girls, but of girls who really do make an, effort to fulfil their duty towards the male sex. These girls seem, however, unable to understand that what suits one person does not necessarily suit everybody. If a tall, thin English girl sees a short, dumpy girl in a dress that sets off her charms to advantage, she appears , soon afterward ir. an exact cop}' of this dress, and then indulges In the pleasing, delusion that she looks well in it. Thus it is that dumpy girls go about in, clothes befitting tall girls, and tall girls in those befitting dumpy girls : that, long faces have hats made for fat faces, and fat faces hats made for long faces ; that blondes array themselves in colors that look well on brunettes, and brunettes in colors that look well on blondes. Now, American girls rarely fall into these errors. The other day, at Homburg, I was standing; near, the spring,; talking to ; an American girl, who looked like a picture, so harmoniously did all the colors in which she was arrayed match, • and so perfectly did she seem to.make one with .her. clothes, .like a bird in its feathers.. “How do you manage it.?” .I- asked. “The root of it all is,” she answered, “that we each study our own style.” ‘“ We never, wear a dress as it comes from a dressmaker, but. we drape it ourselves. Wo know what colors match, and we take care not to produce discords. Nature has not made us all perfect, j If wo have too long a neck, we reduce it by tying a piece of lace round it. If we are short-necked we .don’t ‘dress it high.’. If we.have, long, faces we don’t wear a tall peaked hat, but if we have round faces we dp. Most of us have small feet, but if our feet,are J iL r"e we don’t utterly neglect our shoes and stockings. , Then wo never forgot smaller details. VVe know, where to put a bow, and we don’t have too many of them. If our foreheads ar-e high we don’t draw our hair back, and if they are low we don’t draw our hair over our eyebrows. Wo don’t wear outlandish jewelry because wo, happen to have it. Indeed, we very seldom,wear.any jewelry at all, because it looks, vulgar. “An English girl goes into, a shop, tries a hat, whioh tftkes her, fancy, and, then puts it on straight ; over,,, her •eyebrows,. ,just as the stupid hat-maker has, told her to : wear it., Do I look, as well like this ?” she added, as she palled her hat forward. I had to confess that it was not an improvement. , “ The. way, you wear your hat,” she continued, warming with the subject, “is just;as important as the hat itself. Costly feathers don’t always make fine birds, and all feathers don’t suit all birds alike.

I knew an English family in Paris. The amount that those girls spent on their dress was perfectly frightful, and they were mover fit to be seen. Sometimes they would all come out dressed alike, as if the family had bought a web of cloth. When they were not dressed alike, their things seemed to get mixed up, and the effect was most disastrous. They had no idea of neatness. I never saw one of them without something wrong about her.” “ Were they pretty,:” I asked. “Yes, very pretty,” she replied ; “ and this prettineas is what spoils English girls; they are so proud of their looks that they think that it does not signify what they wear, while we Americans are naturally modest.”