PRETTY GIRLS' FAILURES.

Thames Star, Volume VI, Issue 1784, 21 September 1874, Page 3

PRETTY GIRLS' FAILURES.

BY M. OR N.

When one writes for the public he cannot demand that only a section of the public will read what he has written. But. nevertheless, I wish to state, in the beginning of this paper, that my words are only addressed to pretty girls—that the counsel and advice I intend: to give will be useful only to them—and that their plain, elderly, or marriedjsisters will be guilty of an offence against good man-' ners if they read what was never intended for .their eyes./ To make* the m'stter perfectly clear; and set before plain and elderly women distinctly the fact that they should not read any further, I will address my remarki to'my pretty young friends in the second person, and those who are,not young and pretty, and who will yet continue to read, will have the consciousness on them of doing so through a keyhole. There are few men, my dear young friends, fonder of pretty girls than I, You have been to me a study of which. I never tired, from my earliest boyhood to what I regret to say I must now call the < decline of life; and the experience I have gathered' during many years entitles me to speak about you with a freedom that would be presumption in one less learned. I have ever loved you., 1 have that natural admiration for the beautiful, and am endowed by nature with such, an exuberance of affection, that love for you is a necessity of existence—a love -perennial and unquenchable, for it does not confine itself to one object. There are men who love, andyet get cured of it by remaining constant, while 1 never love one girl sufficiently long to icease tolovei but transfer my affections when they are warmest, and thus ever keep alive the lamp of love in my bosom. ' Perhaps you ask me why I tell you all this ? Why expose the tender secrets of my heart to, perhaps, thte derision of an unfeeling world P I will tell you, dear girls, it is to win your confidence ; it is to gain your sympathies ; it is to cause you to turn your hearts to me, as mine is always turned towards you. I want you, my dear pretty ones, to be thoroughly in accord with inc. I want you to feel that lam your friend, and that what I am about to say is for your good. The whole benefit that might be derived from good advice is lost jWhentthe heart of the hearer is steeled against the words of the lecturer., But I do not meanto lecture unkindly. It is in sorrow and not in anger that I address you. All that I wish is to make you happyj and the only hope that exists of .thai is to advise you while you are still young and beautiful. Listen to mo and and all may be well; go your cwn road and y«u.will only add fresh instances of the failuf 6s of pretty girls. For the admiration with which, even at my time of life, I look upon you is blended, I regret to say, with sorrow for your future fate. The prizes in the profession of matrimony for ; which y_pu are candidate* will not be yours, i^jfir dlder and plainer sisters, who in jkSf ignorance now regard you with feelinp of envy, hatred, arid malice," will rise to an eminence incomparably greater than you at© likely to attain to, and in the affecting words of Campbell's ballad, you will; be " left lamenting." This is so peculiar a point in the science of matrimony that in their interests and yours' I consider it necessary to enter fully into it. There are numbers of you young, ladies who will read this paper who not only are, but Who tmfortunately know yourselves tbb& exquisitely beautiful. If t you know, you could,be beautiful without knowing it your future might bs a happy one, but the knowledge of that which you now regard as a means of success will, when you eiter on the matrimonial relation/ be

the cause of your failure. In my 'mind's cjul can .see. oiiany | heads .indignantly tossed, many ppetty noses scornfully elovaiet.l in i\w air. I am fully conscious .that thciv will be many rebellious hearts among my fair readers, and that my words wilt.call forth murmurs from many rosy lips. Bilt I heed them not. Strong in my /integrityan'dimy experience I proceed^ and the loveliest among you will yet humbly acknowledge my wisdom. ;: All my pretty girls • will: love,' and bo loved, and marry for love. Smiles now, no doubt, ripple up on the dear faces that a few months ago were idark and almost ugly with frowns. "If we love, and are loved, and marry for love," mothinks I hear you say, " the' fondest i and dearest dreams of our lives will be realised— a cottage with the man wo love, a cow, perhaps ; a few chickens, and a pretty garden; and what more is there on earth

to sigh for?" Ah! young women, young women I This seeking after love, this striving for a realisation of your maidenly dreams, this vaia hope of an impossible happiness, is the doom against which I would, warn you. I will tell you why. Prom the very earliest period of which you entertain a recollection you have been petted and praised for your good looks and your pretty ways. You have as children been taken out and made much of, while your plain brothers and sisters have been left at home. Your schoolfellows, envying you all the while, have encouraged you in your vanity by fussing and striving who would be your best frieed. The charm of your beauty has worked on your fathers and mothei\s, your uncles and aunts, your servants, and'every one who has come in contact with you, and each has striven with the ether who should do most to spoil you. And I—even I —who should, with my experience, be above the vulgar weakness of those who are ignorant of the arts of woman—l, with the slowbeating heart and the mature judgment, the grey hairs and wrinkled brow, resulting from many decades of unremitting study of you, and you alone—must sorrowfully admit that 11 -never get into the company of a.pretty girl without feeling an irresistible impulse upon me urging me to make love to fieri :

Love, then, dear girls, is the food on which your young life is fed. You muit have love or die/ The prettier, the nicer, the more aim able you are, the more you feel the need of the divine stimulant for which you were given a taste in your young days. The ugly ones are brought up in temperance. They form little bands of hope, total abstainers from the intoxicating pleasures of the kiss, the caress, and the fondling which prove so ruinous to you. They have sober ideas. They do not despise aged men. They seek not for accomplishments in husbands. Steady, plodding, hard-working fellows, who can neither dance, nor sing, nor make themselves generally useful at evening parties, who, finding themselves despised and. scorned of you, turn in their despair to the ugly one s, who are only too glad to respond to theira'dvances. Therejectedof the pretty girls become the corner stones of the prosperity of their plain sisters.

You, with the tastes implanted in you in your youth, must not only be loved but love. You seek out nice fellows. You place your affections on the perishable graces of dancing, singing good looks, and nice manners. The man to whom you pledge yourself must be one of whom you can be proud, and you value him as you have ever been valued yourself, for his externals. The red-headed, slowtdngued man, with the heavy boots and awkward manner, no matter how true and good he may be, will you turn away from in favor of the graceful, graceless,•, ne'er-do-weel, whose whole estate is on' his backhand that encumbered.

You pretty girls will have love, and you pay for it. You marry the nice fellows, and the very qualities for which you love them make them mistakes; in life. They are jolly fellows, and invited out everywhere. It was thus you met them. The time that should be given to work they devote to pleasure. Where they 'given to work they wouldn't have been nice; enough to please you. They have all sorts of accomplishments and social arts. They are learned in these at the cost of winning substantial bread and butter. The nice fellow can perhaps take you home to a cottage, prettily furnished it may be ; he can, for a month, or a year, make you* very happy; but as year on year passes by, the cottage will become smaller as the family grow larger, the furniture will become shabbier, and and the means of renewing it more difficult ; and, incredible as it may appear, the intense desire for the enjoyment of your society may disappear when there is nothing to prevent a meeting of five or six hours in duration every evening in the week.

My dear girls, the uglj ones do better. They have to put up with the elderly, the prosaic, the stolid, and the stupid, who are passed over in contempt by you; and their husbands are the men who win the prizes' of life, who build the";big houses, drive the carriages, and keep the train of servants. They' envy you before marriage; yeu, with the knowledge that marriage brings, envy them after. They iiever professed -ror, at least, felt—much love for the man they married, and* they never, therefor^ disturb their own arrangements to consuv their husband's'convenience, y ~i .

: But you,'iny'pretty ones, will not only sacrifice your hopes of a good social position by adhering to an absurd affection, but will for long years endeavour to keep up the semblance of an attachment that ended within a week of .marriaga., The concluding; adrice which I; now offer to you is, not to set yonr hearts on nice fellows, Look out for elderly men, gravejJsoliH,|'serious;. fogiesf with jhpusesV and 'land's", and balances* at the batik. "Without tha slightest effort on your part you'll be able, to get them to Iqre you to any extent you please^ and you'll be spared having to make any sacrifice after

marriage by not loving th<?m in return. If you do this, foregoing the momentary pleasures of love in your youth, your lots may be as happy as I wish them to be. You have, in short, to choose between being old men's darlings and young men's sku es, and I earnestly trust you will make a wise choice.—Australasian.