THE YANKEE GIRL.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7139, 28 May 1910, Page 6

THE YANKEE GIRL.

Not having been subjected to any traditionalistic education, or kept within any hereditary routine through discipline or prejudice, the American girl is exactly what she makes herself. She is developed freely like a young sapling that has never been pruned. Daughter of a vigorous race, she .has astounding vitality, with a. superabundance of energy and will power. But fortune and the conditions of real life call upon her to employ her resources.advantageously. Every physical effort is rendered unnecessary. A bellboy opens the door; an elevator carries her to any. story she desires; the telephone keeps her in communication with her relations. It is no longer necessary for her to lift a single latch, to mount a- single step,, to push open a door. The most simple actions of life are performed for her automatically, arid she is condemned to dream away in a forced epicureanism. It is the possession of fortune that imposes this artificial slothfulness on the American girl. Her energy, which cannot assert itself for a definite object, seeks there some other- channel of activity. But a way seems always open to her. That is found ia sports—sports which provide for the body a field of exercise and maintain the equilibrium between the force which is accumulated and that which is frittered away. Be these, Yankee girls what they may (says a Tfench writer) their lot is enviable and their mission a lofty one. In this land of practicality they have been able to im trodnee the beautiful, and the ornamentation of inacsthetie towns is accomplished by the picturesqueness of their equipages, the beauty of their faces, the rustle of their gowns, and the pleasant peal of their laughter. These women represent, while the men accumulate, wealth.