Sarcastic Women.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 992, 6 March 1891, Page 4

Sarcastic Women.

‘What is your opinion of Miss B.’ I asked a young man the other evening. *ob, she is too sarcastic,’ was the reply. I don’t know exactly why it should bo so, but I find that the girls of this colony are apt to be more sarcastio thau girls in a similar position are in any other part of the world I have visited. Colonial girls pride themselves oa their smartness. I must admit that they are smarter in a certain sense than girls of their own age in the old Home we call England. la the colonies a girl of 15 or 16 is r. 3 worldly wise as a young women of 20 or 22 in Great Britain. In the first place colonial girls are more self-reliant. They are accustomed from childhood to mix more with the world than do girls in England. They are more precooious. From their brothers, and from other associates they hear smart sayings, and they learn that smartness, according to a colonial idea, borrowed probably from America, is one of the cardinal virtues. This idea is planted in their minds at an early age, and they as a rule endeavour to live up to it. One result is they develop into sarcasm under the mistaken idea that it is smartness. The excesß of liberty allowed young girls in this colony, combined with the existing democracy, or the absence of those marked and well defined class limits, so prominent iu England is a direct encouragement to sarcasm. All colonials as a rule have sharper wits than people of their own class in England, and they are aware of it. See how helpless a new chum is amongst a number of his or her colonial companions. The colonial sees this, and prideß him or herself upon their superior knowledge. This gives a zest to their own precocious ideas of smartness, and from this very smartness grows the sarcasm I so frequently meet with. Sarcasm is more pronounced amongst colonial women than men. One reason probably is that there is not the restraint put upon girls here that there is at Home. They are rather encouraged to say smart things. They are not taught the duty of reverence and obedience. They are permitted too much to * run wild,’ especially in a conversational sense. Their abundance of outdoor life gives them great vitality, and a superabundance of animal spirits. They move in a mixed society of races. .They are not isolated in a manner such as, say a girl ia Yorkshire who does not travel more than ten miles away from her home during the whole of her life. In that oase her language, her habits, her thoughts her inclinations are all essentially of Yorkshire. She knows nothing beyond. Bat in the colonies every girl is to a certain extent a cosmopolitan. Her intimate companions include Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Germans, English and multiplex colonials- From such a mixture, she gains smarter ideas than the stay-at-home English girls, always sur. rounded by companions of tho same trait of character as herself. No wonder then that the colonial girl haß distinct and peculiar characteristics. The colonial girl ia more vivacious than her English counterpart. This vivacity induces witticisms, and colonial wit is largely tine* tured with sarcasm. Tho great mistake made is to oonfound sarcasm with wit. A girl is proud to say smart things ; she thinks it proves her wisdom. She likes to bristle all over with points as sharp aj needles. She delights in sparing no one. The sarcastic woman is never popular, save viith a few whomshedominates or uses for her own ends. However brilliant she may be she sacrifices her powers and destroys her influence by her want of womanliness and aDd fine feeling. No man is ever sure of himself in her presence, nnd women pass her bv on the other sido whenever they can conveniently do it. The sarcastic woman is never to be con. founded with the thoughtless one. The latter may be vivacious, witty, and yet popular, for her heedless speeches however they may wound are repented of as soon as they are uttered, and, if she is a true woman, apologised for. The sarcastic woman never apologises. She is not fine enough to disoern the wide difference between thougbtloss quickness of speech and malicious words uttered by a tongue accustomed to stinging as remorsely and needlessly as a fractious bee. The sarcastic woman soon degenerates into an habitual detractor. Mention whom you may, she immediately bristles into action, and covers your words of merited praise with something derogatory. Detraction is the twin of sarcasm when the latter power Is abused. Far better to remain for ever silent than to withhold from any human being the meed of praise so hardly earned in this bußy world. _ Dora.