LADIES' COLUMN.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 172, 25 May 1871, Page 6

LADIES' COLUMN.

The following description of the American young ladies, from the "Saturday Eeview," is unique if not very flattering: — Perhaps the pleasantest form of winter flitting is that of flitting by sea, and getting rid of war and rumours of war altogether. Justice has hardly yet been done to life on board a packet Nothing is so hostile to social existence as a railway compartment; nothing so favourable to it as the deck of a steamer. Everybody is wholly dependent on everybody else. There is all the variety of a club without its stiff" isolation; there are Calvinistic Scotch couples, who ponder over their ailments and " prefer to make no acquaintances ;" persons very much on the loose; prim English matrons ; and Yankee girls of a very unprim type indeed. The Yankee girl was bora to live in packets. She gives one the notion of being created to rush through space. She is always on the move; last year in Paris, the year before iv San Francisco; she has taken a run back to New York on her way to Cairo; you meet her on the Pyramids, you flirt with her iv the Sierra Morena, you jostle her in the studios of Borne, and you cut her in the Tuileries Gardens. She is equally fond of supper and sentiment; and breaks into one's rhapsody over the sunrise to spout out an order for a hard-boiled egg, and two slices of ham " cut lean." She is silent when her mouth is full, and that is fortunately pretty often. But a great deal of her conversation when it is empty refers to the mode of filling it. She is great on "tables d'hote," and critical on hotels. Her pocket book is full of charming recipes for dishes she has met with, mixed up oddly with descriptions of Rome and the names of her daucing partners. She delights in telling you how rich "pa" is and how vulgar "ma " is. " I'm a Yankee gal, I guess, and ma keeps pretty slick out of my way." Life takes a free and easy turn in this abseuce of maternal supervision. For a certain noisy kind ' of flirting, nobody is the Yankee girl's equal. To do her justice she does not mix with it the' slightest tinge of romance or poetry. She has, in fact a great horror and contempt for aUF the higher and more poetic sides of human sentiment. She likes to amuse and to be amused, but she hates "nonsense." She never saw you before, and she never cares to see you again, but while you are there she will laugh with you, chat with you, tell you her secrets, swear a constant fidelity, and and give you a lock of her hair. It is difficult to say whether she is married or not ; if she is it does not matter much, for her husband is as often without as with her. "I love my husband," shs tells you plum ply ; "oh, yes; I love my husband, and a good many other neonle besides !" Aikl then s no. -'oca «lu\vu to supper again, and sentiment is forgotten in a sherrycobbler. Marriages in Spain are arranged by the parties most concerned, and no fortune is necessary on the part of the lady, the hidalgos being very generous and disinterested in their love affairs. In cases where their is a large property, matches are sometimes made up by parents between an uncle and neice, the object being to secure the money to the latter. But the evil of such unions is so visible, that they are looked upon with disfavour, and people question the right of the Church to grant dispensations under such circumstances.—" The Echo."