Why the American Girl Marries.

Auckland Star, Volume XX, Issue 40, 16 February 1889, Page 3 (Supplement)

Why the American Girl Marries.

Several newspapers have taken advantage of the marriage of the Duke of Marlborough to Mrs Hamersley to call attention to the way in which American girls are cutting out Englishgirls in the matrimonial market, atid have suggested many causes tor this. We should say that the main reason is that the American girl is nob so missy as her English sister, and that she is brought up to run down her own game. In England, the notion still prevails that a girl is sure to get into mischief if she has nob a mother or something of that sort at her elbows. She herself resents this, and takes it out in fast conversation and slangy ways, so that she becomes a singular mixture of a doll and tomboy. Her small talk ia the very smallest of small talk. Her mother is always by her, with palpable suggestions of marriage, which frighten off all suitors. The girl dresses badly, generally with meretricious gaud ; she aoes nob g;ve her natural advantages a fair chance; jat one moment she appears in tho hideous garments of the esthete ; at another she is arrayed in a mannish tennis costume with a racket in her hand ; at another in the white and limp muslin of innocence. .There i 3 always an air of effort in her get-up, and of effort which is a failure. Now, the American girl has natural taste ; her clothes seem to belong to her, and whatever she may wear, it is put on to the best advantage ; she knows how to talk agreeably, and, being always quite at her ease, puts all those with whom she is thrown at fcheir ease. The day of the bread-and-butter tomboy is over. English girls must realise this if they want to get married.