The American Girl's Elbow

Southland Times, Issue 9091, 15 December 1885, Page 4

The American Girl's Elbow

Many of the guests at Beatrice's wedding wen Americans. I always know them by tit eager jerkiness of their movements and thei 1 * eager restlessness of expression. When the fair American acquires repose (and she sofiietimes does) she is charming. But as a rale she ia so impetuously impulsive that one is always kept on the gui vive, expecting her to go off like a Champagne cork, but without the least warning. Bnch nodding of little plumed and flower, d bonnets there was 1 Bnch rakioh little hate, with brims cuiled and bent, and alternately flattened-and npli toi 1 One little specimen was precisely the shape of the small trees in the children's Noah arks. Yon can fancy tbe lower branches of one of these very st'ft little sticky, trees raised at one side, can yon, not 1 Well, then, in your imagination yen can trim it with a garland of pink flowers, I and pat it on a pretty little head that keeps bobbing up and down like a cork in a swif r liver current. Have yon ever observed how mhch vivacity there is, too, in American elbows ? They aie fall of expression, I can assure you, and the American ' nudge,Vwhen received in thorough earnest, is something to be remembered. I have an American friend whom I love and admire, but I have had to entreat of her rather . to knock me down than to ' nudge* me, as she calls the violent exercise wherewith she has been wont to attract my attention. The verb is a feeble and futile expression of the thing, itself. Were she to bestow one of her nndges, in jnhtafce, upon a stranger, that aatonished individual would certainly give herin "charge for assault and battery.