SOME MODERN YOUNG LADIES.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2990, 14 September 1878, Page 4

SOME MODERN YOUNG LADIES.

A " Yorkshire old fogy " describes in his letter to the London Standard the dinner which he had in one of the " new school mansions " in South Kensington. He sat beside a very pretty girl, and, old as he was, thought himself lucky until she began to talk. What strange jargon it was those " modrrn young ladies" uttered ! What did they mean by their chatter about " exquisite harmonies* of expression," "an almost rapturous sensuousness," " the divine ideality of man," and so on. He listened in utter bewilderment while his pretty little friend used these and other phrases still more mysterious, and talked familiarly of the works of a number of modern poets, of whom Mr Swinburne was by far the most proper. The "old fogy" turned for relief to his : neighbor on the other side. She, too, was young, but not pretty. Before he knew where he was she had mentioned the names of Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill and Professor Clifford, and had said incidentally that she supposed, of course, that he considered God " quite an exploded hypothesis." After this Yorkshire was hardly shocked when his pretty neighbor invited him to dine at her club to meet a lady whose last volume of verse he happened to have burned in disgust after reading half a dozen pages. And yet, as he. learneid, it was quite good for a miss in her teens to invite half a dozen gentlemen to dine at the Albemarle!