Cleverness in Girls.

Southland Times, Issue 9164, 12 March 1886, Page 4

Cleverness in Girls.

.♦ I should say, observes a writer in All the Tear Bound; that to young girls generally— to clever young girls certainly — cleverness seems to be an unmixed advantage. How delightful to a clever girl of 15 or 16, who then perhaps entera upon regular school work for the first time— how delightful it is for her to find herself at the gates of a new world of thought, to feel the thrill of proud exultation which runs through her as she gazes at it, and exclaims with pardonable enthusiasm, 'I can, at least, be monarch of all I Eurvey I ' How pleasant to see the gratification wiih which her masters gradually discover that one eager mind is drinking in nil they say, aad what trouble they will take to answer and even to anticipate her difficulties I How pleasant, again— albeit somewhat dangeroui —to receive ihe respect and admiration which her schoolfellows will lavish upon her, 60 long, at least, as she is sweet-tempered As well as clever— to respond to the many demands made- upon her for 'Just one thought, dear, to put into my esaay on "Procrastination " ; I've put in all the dictionary lays, but that only fills up half my paper I ' —to hear the invariable, ' O, Ida will tell you that— ihe knows everything I ' And then at the prize giving, bow stimulating is the sense, not only that she is the o l served of all obBervers, but that she is receiving the reward of work well and earnestly done as shebeais away prize after prize only tempered by the regretful wish that poor Melitaa, who i« so iweet, but anything rather than clever— and other kindred spirts— could have had something more to rejoice in than the success of their friend 1