THE SEARCH FOR THE CONGENIAL GIRL

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1507, 17 January 1901, Page 26

THE SEARCH FOR THE CONGENIAL GIRL

“As a class,” said the girl who was putting up the curtains, “I detest room-mates. Have you ever known a girl who was your room-mate with whom you did not have to make an heroic effort to avoid a quarrei before the end of the first week ?” “If you talked to them all like that/* remarked the girl who was the new experiment in room-mates, “Is suppose you fought at the dusk of the first day/' “I have been out in the world,’’ she said, “earning my daily bread and what luxuries I could lor four or five years, and you are the seventh girl who I have tried to hit it off with, for economy's sake. Well, I have seven good friends out of the seven—but, thank heaven, I never tried to go for a holiday with any one of them, unexperimented upon.”

The 'third girl, who wore a pretty hat, and whose admiration for professional wo;men was her sole characteristic besides her many rings, sat as visitor looking on in mute appreciation of the household arrangements in progress. “But,” she said, “the seven were all women interested in something, weren’t they ? Music or art students, newspaper women, teachers of language; think how much you must have had in common, talking about your art. Then in the evening, when, tired after a long day”—— “When tired after a long day,” the curtain girl took up the refrain, “I used to come home to get tired all o ver "again with a long evening of work, and find the couch cushions all shaken up and the alcohol lamp being filled and three people invited for that evening to share my room-mate’s hospitality. Dream of comfort that would be ? “I can’t afford an alcohol lamp,” murmured the new room-mate; “and I am in many ways desirable.” ‘'But all that would only be once in a while, anyway,” objected the girl in the ha.t.

“Yon are right/* assented the one of seven Experiences. “Other times she woukl want a fire when I was positively . stewing, or she would throw open the windows and let in the'noise of the trains till I went to pieces. She would fail to buy matches when it was 1 her tarn. She would read my papers and never buy ..one of her own. She would never bring home fruit or flowers. And, above all, she would let me get well in the middle of an involved sentence on the type-writer, and then break out with: “Dear, what would you think a man meant if he were to * say to you, iust naturally, you know, as if it had just occurred to him*—and so on, ad ineanitandum. “All these were different girls, mind you. But most of them agreed in getting to the pitcher first, when the bathroom wasn't on our floor, and using all the water. Then there was the borrowing—letter paper, stamps, hair pins, hat pins, money. Oh," said the girl at the curtains, “you can't tell me anything about room-mates!" The new experiment sat down on the end of the lounge and voiced her dejection. “Do you think honestly," she wailed, , “that lam going to do one or all of these things? And X was ust ready to ask you for a clean handkerchief. You see, my laundry——" “Handkerchief? 5 ' said the curtain girl, briskly. “You'll find them in the top drawer of the chiffoniere. No, ; here ! Help yourself. Haven't you had experience of that kind, really?" she asked, seriously, ©lipping down to the window seat, and staring out on the street. ‘'Don't you know that what I say is true? One of the greatest problems of the self-supporting woman is to find some congenial girl with whom she can go halves in a decently sized room, and hot wish herself in a bathroom with the bathtub to sleep in forty times the first month." “You are congenial, you know," objected the experiment, feebly, to the curtain girl • “you yourself have tacitly admitted it. Why not some of'the rest of us?" “The only way," went on the girl in the window seat, “for a girl with a small income—an income to live comfortably—is to find some "other girl, also moderately incomed, to take a room with her. The problem is find the girl."' “Well, of course, said the experiment, “one has to put up with things." “Oh, X can do that," said the dissenter, feelingly. “I can stand lending, even being talked to when I want to go to sleep; but there are some few things X cannot stand, usually things that could be avoided. It takes genius not to be needlessly disagreeable, and a genius which not many room-mates possess! or think to cultivate. X remember," she went on, with the little laugh which they told her would make her famous after dinner some time —“I remember a red-haired room-mate I once had who fell in love. I never saw the man. X was spared that. But I suppose I carry

as accurate a description of that man's characteristics and virtues and looks and wise saying® firmly imbedded in my grey

matter as any rogues’ gallery would need. Sue talked about him all the time—talked to me about him. ' It is a great burden to have your room-mate fall in love. “Then there was another, a maddening philosopher. She was really very pretty; one lvouldn’t have believed she could be such a distractedly calm nerson. I remember one night we tipped over the ink—l think I did it—on a dear, Oriental spread we had just bought for the couch. 1 said some things, and respectfully and expectantly waited for her to echo them. She sat by the window and went, on with her drawing of a Minerygi’s ear, and she said, with the calmest deliberation • -'But,- my dear girl, what is a bottle of ink in the sum of your conscious experience? And what a very little thing is a spoiled spread in the universe!’ And another day I missed a call—just missed it by ten. minutes, and came in soaking wet from the rain besides. And she Avas in ; a red bath robe by th© fire, and Avhen I stopped scolding to get my breath, she looked up and said: ‘A little water, dear girl, in the sum total of' time, when.nothing matters ! And what is a caller, more or less, to yon, who are mind?’ You can draw no idea of lioav maddening that sort of thing is. She got it all from an art teacher of hers, who utterly spoiled her for a sensible girl. I ought to have had some college course, I suppose, before I could be said to be broadened; that would have educated me up to trailing about i» wet skirts and a hat, and saying that nothing matters.’’

•“Really, though.” ventured the girl Avho was visiting, “that is a beautiful doctrine, if one would live up to it.” “Live up to it,” repeated the girl Avho had been through it. “I shouldn’t ha've minded her li\ r ing up to it. Where I dis> eented was at her hulling it at me ail the time. She believed in philosophy. Well, I believe in honesty and in ordinary squareness, and that I look best in red; but I don’t feel drawn to impart these things to around me. A roommate. to be a success, has got to keep still more; than half the. time.”

you,” said the experiment, kindly, “believe in rushing your busy half through, don’t you ?”

The girl in the windoAV seat, being a philosopher herself, did not mind. “Some girls, you knoAv,” she said, tranquillv, “seem to feel it in the air when you want them to keep still. Others you have to tell, and either hurt their feelings or make them angry. Some know just how much to give up, and how often it is their turn to straighten the room, and that they can brush their oavu skirts before they put them on just as con\ r eniently as you can do it for them afterwards. Some girls are horn with all this, as they are Avith skill at doing up their Jhat well, or making dimity dresses, or saying the right thing. It takes,” concluded tl}e Avoman with experience, ‘'a woman of talent to he a roommate.” The new experiment raised a woebegone face from the couch pillows and addressed her. “You have the talent?” shei asked her, despairingly. - “Bless you, no!” answered the other girl, attacking the curtains , again. “What made you think that?” “We both gathered the idea,’’ said the girl in the hat, honestly. “And I truly plan and premeditate doing my best,” promigeyd the new experiment. “My dear,” said the woman behind the curtains, “you have one of the dearest, prettiest faces I ever saw, and the softest voice I know. Do you suppose, really, that you ought to be expected to have anything else? Now, I’m sorry, hut I must leave you to finish these. And would *<ou mind, dear,” she asked, as she pinned on her hat, “just brushing my skirt for me, please?”—From “Melbourne Leader.”

A man who lives in a. thriving town not far from Kansas City, a blacksmith by trade, makes quantities of tomahawks and sells them to Indians at Western agencies, and' they in turn sell them to Eastern tourists as curiosities. BLe makes them by hand, from old gun-bar-rels. The man was formerly a Government blacksmith, and learned the secret of his profitable traffic then.