I do not know of a more quietly funny sight than a group of school-girls, all talking as fast as their tongues can wag, (forty-woman power,) and clinging inextricably together like a parcel of macaroni, à la Napolitaine. Their independence is quite refreshing. Lady Blessington in her diamonds never descended the grand staircase at Covent Garden Opera House with half the consciousness of making a sensation, that you may notice in these school-girls whenever you take your walks abroad. It is delightful to see them step off so proudly, and look you in the face so coolly, thinking all the time of just nothing at all. Their boldness is the boldness of innocence; for perfect modesty does not even know how to blush. How vain they grow as they advance in their teens! How careful they are that the crinoline "sticks out" properly before they venture on the road to school! If Mother Goose (of blessed memory) could take a look into this world now, she would wish to revise her ancient rhyme to her patrons,—
"Come with a whoop—come with a call," &c.,—
for she would find that it is now their custom to come with a hoop when they come for a call.
When unhappy Romeo stands in old Capulet's garden, under the pale beams of the "envious moon," and watches the unconscious Juliet upon the balcony, he utters, in the course of his incoherent soliloquial apostrophe, these remarkable words concerning that interesting young person:—
"She speaks, yet she says nothing."
I have seen many young ladies of Juliet's time of life in my day of whom the same thing might be said. They indeed speak, yet say nothing. Yet take them on such a subject as the trimming of a new bonnet for Easter Sunday, or any of those entertaining topics more or less connected with the adornment of their persons, and how voluble they are! To the stronger sex, which of course cares nothing about dress, being entirely free from vanity, the terms used in their never-ending colloquies on such themes are mere unmeaning words; but I must do the gentler side of humanity the justice to say that they are not all vanity, as their fathers and husbands find to their dismay, when the quarterly bills come in, that gimp, and flounces, and trimming generally, have a real, tangible existence.
How sentimental they are! In my young days albums were all the rage among young ladies; but now they seem to be somewhat out of date, and young ministers have taken their place. What pains will they not take to get a bow from the Rev. Mr. Simkins! They swarm around him after service, like flies around the bung of a molasses cask. Raphael never had such a face as his; Massillon never preached as he does. What a wilderness of worsted work are they not willing to travel over for his sake! How do they exhaust their inventive faculties in the search after new patterns for lamp mats, watch cases, pen wipers, and slippers to encase the feet at which they delight to sit! But when Simkins marries old Thompson's youngest daughter and a snug property, he finds a sad abatement in his popularity. The Rev. Mr. Jenkins, a young preacher with a face every whit as milk-and-watery as his own, succeeds to the throne he occupied, and reigns in his stead among the volatile devotees; and Simkins then sees that his popularity was no more an evidence of the favour his preaching of the gospel found among those thoughtless young people than was the popularity of the good-looking light comedian, after whom the girls ran as madly as they did after his own white neckerchief and nicely-brushed black frock coat.
Exaggeration is one of the great faults of girlhood. Whatever meets their eyes is either "splendid" or "horrid." They delight to exaggerate their likes and dislikes. Self-restraint seems to be a term not contained in their lexicon. They take a momentary fancy to a young man, and flatter him with their smiles until some new face takes his place in their fleeting memory. In this way many young hearts are frittered away in successive flirtations before their possessors have reached womanhood. But it would be wrong to confine action from mere blind impulse and exaggeration to young girls alone. I think it is St. Paul who gives us some good counsel about "speaking the truth in love." I fear that very few victims of the tender passion, from Pyramus and Thisbe down to Petrarch and Laura, and from the latter couple down to Mr. Smith with Miss Brown hanging on his arm,—who have not sadly needed the advice of the Apostle of the Gentiles. I have seen very few people in my day who really speak the truth in love. Therefore I will not blame girls for a fault which is common to all mankind.
Impulse is commonly supposed to be inconsistent with cunning; but in most girls I think the two things are singularly combined. I am told that there is an academy in this city, frequented by many young women, known as the School of Design. The fact is a gratifying one to me; for my observation of girlish nature had led me to suppose that there were very few indeed of the young ladies of these days who required any tuition in the arts of design. I hail the fact as a good omen for the sex. Action from impulse carries its young victims to the extremes of good and evil. Queen Dido is a fair type of the majority of her sex. Defeated in their hopes, they are willing to make a funeral pile of all that remains to them. But there is a spirit of generosity in them which does not find a place in the hearts of men. It was the part of Eve to bring death into this world, and all our woe, by her inquisitiveness and credulity; but it was reserved for Adam to inaugurate the meanness of mankind by laying all the blame to his silly little wife. The accusation ought to have blistered Adam's cowardly tongue.
But I am making a long preachment, and yet I have said very little. I must leave my young friends, however, to draw their own lessons from the portrait I have given of one whose perfections would far outweigh the silliness and vanity of a generation of girls. Let them take the gentle Josey as the model of their youth, and they will not wish to sculpture their later career after any less perfect shape. There will then be fewer heartless flirts, fewer vain exhibitors of the works of the milliner and dressmaker parading the streets, and more true women presiding over the homes of America. The imitation of her virtues will be found a better preservative of beauty than any eau lustrale; for it will create a beauty which "time's effacing fingers" are powerless to destroy, and give to those who practise it a serene and lovely old age, whose recollection of the past, instead of awakening any self-reproach, shall be a source of perpetual benediction.