THE SUPERIOR BEX

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 11977, 21 September 1906, Page 4

THE SUPERIOR BEX

"Bots and girls are just like cats and dogs; they very seldom have a good word to say about one another," is the opinion of a Soho lad who was asked to write an essay on girls. The girlß were also given ''Boys" as a subject, and we are told that the remark quoted sums .up a good deal of what was contained in the essays. The sweeping condemnation of the girls by the boys is most amußing. They are vain, they receive all the attention at home, they are duffers at games and fighting, they tell tales, and they are altogether feeble ceartures, with whom no respectable boy ought to associate. "In this way" (extravagance of dress), says one future lasher of the sins of society, "most girls show great pride, one of the devil's great sins. They friss their hair and wear hats three times the size of their heads, and have ribbons flying about in all directions." When a girl throws a ball, says another critic, "she gets her arm curled up in a very stupid way," and the ball "goes about two yards," whereas when a boy throws a ball "it goes miles"! Most boys appear to think only of the courage that dares and not of the courage that endurea. "If a girl is in the dark, and hear's a man's voice, she will scream; but a boy will get a poker and say, 'Come out. I'll give you what for!'" Another boy disapproves of the higher education for girls. "In olden times girls used to learn needlework and other useful things; now they learn, arithmetic and algebra like the boys," which is but another version of "the ladies— once our superiors, now our equals." The most astonishing remark is that about the behaviour of the sexes in school. "Girls talk too much in school, which boys do not; you can hear a pin drop when boys are at work." Affairs of the heart are spoken of with contempt, and the blame for them is placed on the girlß. One boy thinks that it is bad enough that sweethearting exists at all, and heartily approves of the marriage law which prevents marriage between brothers and sisters, for there would not be much peace in such unions. The same boy believes in celibacy for practical reasons. 'J. have heard it is better to keep single, and if you are married you are twenty-fire shillings a week less in your pocket." But underneath al lthis criticism, much of which is probably affected, the clergyman who corrected the papers finds a real admiration, and he concludes that the age of chivalry is not yet dead. Unfortunately, we are not able to give the girls' impressions of boys", but the examiner says that they are much less harsh in their judgment than are the boys. One notices the same difference in men and women. Perhaps the mildness of feminine criticism comes from a sort of hopelessness bor» of experience of man's impenetrable conceit.