THE AMERICAN GIRL.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2614, 13 April 1889, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE AMERICAN GIRL.

Mk G. Smalley thus discourses in the New York Tribune of the burning social subject of the hour : — " Why, then, do the young Englishmen prefer the Americans ?" Each has hia own reasons, good unto him, but the reason which underlies all the others is social, not personal. The relations between the sexes in youth are ten times more natural. Life does not begin with the English girl on her coming out. She is still in the nursery or the schoolroom, is still the bread-aud-butter miss, still the nonentity, still the shy, silent, unformed creature she was. She is not sure of herself or of anybody else. She has no conversation, or none that does not require drawing out, and the young Englishman is not good at drawing out. She knows that she has been taken to market, and her sensations on entering society cannot be very different from those of the wnite slave on the auctionblock in the East. She has been taught to be timid. Opinions, ideas, initiative of her own, the meeting on equal terms with youngsters in black coats and white ties, and kind of frank or friendly intercourse, and knowledge of the world or of life—all these things are to her anathema. She is what her mother and governess have made her ; as her mother before her was made by her mother and governese. Her incapacities are hereditary; her notions are purely conventional ; Mrs Grundy is the deity who rules over her universe. She ie monotonous, and men like variety. She is a chrysalis, and to a chrysalis even a butterfly is preferable. She is the raw material of a charming woman, and it is not every young Briton who feels himself competent to complete her education, or willing to let others complete it. He often hung back long before he heard of America. When he went there he found a girl who had everything the English girl had, and something beside. The American did meet him on even term3—as a rule much more than even—for she is as superior to the average young Englishman as to the average English girl. Her intelligence, quickness, freshness, animation, fullness of character, often her brilliancy, always her individuality, were perfectly novel to him and perfectly delightful. la it so wonderful that he liked her better than her doll-cousin in this damp island, and married her ? I once knew, or rather I still have the honour of knowing, an American girl who has beeome an English woman by marriage. Sho was good enough to talk over this question with me. She knew both sides of it, and both sides of it perfectly. " Tho girls have tho best of ic at homo," said she, " and the young women in En&flaud. The right thing to

do is to be born in the States and marry hero. I said: " i ou mean that the American girl has as much freedom as the English wife." "So has the American wife ; but that

it not tho point. VV ith us in America, as you know, the girl gets all tho attention from the men. In London society the girl is nowhere, and the young wives are the attraction. Men will not be bored to talk to girls." With her testimony may be compared that of a young Englishwomen, married, pretty, extremely clever, titled, and in the best set of the best society. The company had been dismissing a new Anglo-Ameri-can Union, and thero were the usual wonderings what there was in these girls from beyond the sea that bewitched the bent men who went over there. Lady Z. listened and reflected, and said in her sunny way, " Well, tho best of them do beat us."

Theso two stories togethar contain as much of the philosophy of the whole business as the journalist can be expected to supply. They aro texts on which a long eermon might be preached—too long for

one day. "Bat tho American girls have the most money," growled tho British Mother on one occasion. Sometimes they have, and when they have it is again tho social

system in which they live that bestows it on them. If English fathers persist in sacrificing their daughters to their sons, what else can we expect ? In tho great families, of course, the younger sons fnre not much better, as a rule, than the daughters. If there is a title, the estate must be left together to support it. If there is none, it must be increased iu hopes the title may come. In the middle classes, with whom this particular marriage question concerns itself but little, tho°rulo still is to give more to tho male than to the female progeny, save when the upper middleelass drtugbtor is to be bartered for a title. Primogeniture or not, few of tho great families would be as groat as they aro had not oldest sons from time to timo married fortunes acquired in trado. But what remains to the others? A duke's daughter with 50,000d015. is thonght rather well off. Anyone with twico that is a good match ; and a girl with half a million is a prize for which a generation of young patricians compete. Tho growl about money is therefore merely a growl. The English have money enough; they could give it to their daughters ,if thoy liked ; perhaps aa a last resource against the flowing tide from America, they will enlarge their portions. There would be one result, and one <inly. They would hava then to invent :i fre.-m. reason to account for the continuing attnistivenessof the American ffirl.