A girl who writes letters like that is a girl who would have been after the heart of Gilbert White of Selborne.
The old-fashioned girl is sentimental in so far as to be sentimental is to have a tender and susceptible heart, for her sentimentality is not of that order the other name of which is mawkishness. In fact, it is of a kind that justifies the singular assertion made by gentle William Shenstone: “The French use the word naïve in such a sense as to be explainable by no English word, unless we will submit to restrain ourselves in the application of the word sentimental.”
This sentimentality, the other name of which is naïveté of feeling, in the old-fashioned girl led her to say the other day to a woman whom she loved, “I wonderfully admire you,” and naïveté of feeling it is that inspires phrasing so charming as this, which I cite from the letter (date May 1st, 1894) of an old-fashioned girl: “It is four years since I have seen you, my friend, except by letters.”
An Infant Phenomenon
There he’s the darlingest dearest cleverest, brightest little fellow in the world. Yes he is.
It has been said in the foregoing that the old-fashioned girl exists in less numbers to-day than in days gone by; so far is she, however, from being as uncommon as the great auk, that I who write this have only to shut my eyes to see a long procession of old-fashioned girls pass before me.
First passes Ann (in her own explanatory phrasing, “plain A-double-N”), who always brings her letters to a close with “believe me,” and uses a nominative of address in writing a postcard.
Next pass Elizabeth, Betsy, Bessy and Bess—no Elsie, mark you.
Elizabeth wears boots with toe-caps, and is, we who know her believe, the last girl who will use the phrase, “canons of good taste.”