AMERICAN YOUNG LADIES.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 825, 15 June 1871, Page 3

AMERICAN YOUNG LADIES.

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 varietyof a club without its stiff isolation; there are Calvanistic 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 born to live in packets. She gives one the notion of being created to run through space. She is always on the move; last year in Paris, the year before in San Prancisco; she has taken a run back to New York on her way to Cairo; you meet with her in the Pyramids, you flirt with her in the Sierra Modena, you jostle with her in the studios of Rome, and you cut her in the Tuileries Gardens. She is equally fond of supper and sentiment; and breaks into one's rapsody 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 dancing 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 absence of maternal supervision. Por 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 all 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 give you a lock of her hair. It is difficult to say whether she is married or not ; if she is it does not maiter much, for her husband is as often without as with her. " I love my husband," she tells you plumply : " oh, yes ; I love my husband, and a good many other people besides!" And then she goes down to supper again, and sentiment is forgotten in a sherry-cobbler.

Parson B was truly a pious man, and at the long grace which usually followed the meals he and the whole of the family knelt down except the parson's brother, who, being o'er much fat, stood with his back to the table, overlooking the garden. One day—it was summertime—the parson was unusually favoured, not appearing to notice the fidgety movement of his brother, who kept twisting about until finding no end to the thanks, he broke in with, " Cut it short; the cows are in the garden, playing Old Harry with the cabbages." Cattle are dumb beasts, but by getting together in large numbers they make themselves heard. A young gentleman, five years of age, was approached with childish endearments by an infant of eighteen months. " Don't you see," said the mother, " that the baby wants to kiss you ?" "Yess," replied young maturity, indignantly ; " that's because he takes me for his papa."

A gentlemen is a gentleman the world over ; it is only the loafers that differ.