How Girls Are Brought Out.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 196, 17 August 1895, Page 1 (Supplement)

How Girls Are Brought Out.

To the June number of the ' Windsor ( Mu{?tt7Jni\' Anthony Hope contributes some del giitiul go«sip of tho month under bhe title. • The Fly on the Wheel.' He is perhaps , at his best when he asks : ' What i<< done to a girl bebwpen sixteen and eighteen ? It is no us>e for mothers to nhake i-lioir heads iinrl look innocen . When I lir«t knew Hetty she was hulf-w H y between ."ixteon and seventeen, the attainment of thin latter .ige bnng already discussed as an important imunniling event, to onrry with ib changes of grave moment. For my own part I fhouL'ht (such was my ignorance) that Hetty did nob require alteration. I remember rather liking than not her free confident mirth, her unchecked petulance, her boisterous grace, her open demand for admiration and challenge to you to rosier, her if you couid. In those daya when she wan bod mo (which was tolerably often) she used to Bay so (in which surely there was nothing amiss), and when she did nob she was wont to state the reason—vhich was as a rule, that she wished bo talk to another man. Then she wenb bo etay with an aunt in town, and waa there subjected to a mysterous training. Hetty came back cautious, diffident, repressed, and very carefully attired. Sbe reminded me of a man who walked between deep precipices on a narrow lodge, co closely did she eeem bo wafceh her own behaviour. Neither her manners, nor her movements, nor her skirts exhibited their former vagaries. She took references to her bygone self in bad part, and even her anger bad lost ibe freshness and its " tang." She was not furious now, nor reeentful, bub " hurt," and before this offensive form of emotion (surely the most unfair of mental attitudes) raillery dropped its arms. The lasb stage c'atno. She was formed, bub I have nob the heart to describe her. Yet the quite-formed girl differs from the half-formed eirl no less widely and vitally than the half-formed from the entirely unformed. How is this? Is halfforming a purely negative process, consisting entirely in the suppression and obliteration of the natural girl—a training in prohibitions, resulting in thab uneasy, selfdistrustful demeanour ? Then, with the completion of the process, confidence returns. The pupil is again at ease; correct behaviour haa become automatic. Thab which is perfect cannob act imperfectly. The quite formed girl knows this. She is therefore irradiated with a rational eelfeatiefaction; she is quite comfortable about)

herself; consequently her original nature, habits, and ways revive. Bub they do not revive in their original form ; they are nob what they were, any more than U the foob of a Chinese lady when the bandagea are taken off.'