SOCIETY IN AMERICA.

Waikato Times, Volume III, Issue 159, 15 May 1873, Page 3

SOCIETY IN AMERICA.

Tni. fit-it jioiut iv which the difference from England strikes a stranger h the liberty allowed to girls and young men of going about together. They walk out in the country or in the streets of a town, not merely in groups, but a couple, all alone, unaccompanied by aunts or brothers, without asking any permission, and without attracting any notice. A girl may do this with some particular friend as often as sbo ploa.su. I knew a young gentleman of Providence, Rhode Island, and an extremely nice fellow ho was, who for a year or more strolled out for two hours one afternoon in every week with one joung lady whose company pleased him, and nobody censured either of them. Both belonged to tho best oocietT Driving is more to tlie tiste of all Americans, joung and old, men and women, than walking is, and to take iv lady out for a drive behind his last-trotting horse is one of the chief delights of the American youth, who is alwa\s happier in the society of women than m that of his own «e\. llcre and there a parent (of European proclivities) may be found who, without venturing openly to disapprove tho* practice, tries to avoid falling in with it ; and when the tiling is done on a large scale, it is thought, in sorao sets, to be a trifle more decorous to have a matron of the party. In New York, for instance, where French or English notions of etiquette are more powerful than in most other cities, when half v, dozen young men invite as many girls to drive with thorn up through the Central Park to a favourite dining-placc near tho north end of Mandattan Island, dine or sup there, and come back in the evening, they usually seeu-e one married lady who does propriety, or, as they express it, matronizea the party. One, however, is enough, and she is not necessarily a relative 13ut this is rather an exceptional concesbion to European ideas ; over almost the whole country, and especially in the West, no question would be rai«i>d as to the right of youths and maidens to dmo about alone together in waggon, buggy, buckboard, or any other contrivanco upon wheels. At evening parties, and in particular at dances, which ore frequented more assiduously and enthusiastically by the American youth than by our own, the chaperon, if not quite unknown, is coraparatncly rare and insignificant. At Washington, where social usages arc a good deal influenced by the presence of so ninny diplomatists from Europe, I believe that she flourishes j and the same may be tho case in particular sets in one or two of tho other Atlantic cities. But in most parts of the Union her presence would be thought quite unnecessary. Now and then, of course, it will happen that a, mother or elder sister accompanies the girl, but far more frequently she goes by herself to the ball, looks after herself when she is there, and comes home with a friend or a servant, sometimes with a young man who escorts her through tlio streets. Such an csoort, one is told, need not be a relative or intimate friend ; he may even be a mere acquaintance who has been introduced to her at the party. Then there is a convenient practice by which a lady may provide herself with ma escort for the whole erening, which two bright New Yorkers, who described it to the writer, strongly recommended for adoption here. The lady asks a young man whom she knows fairly well to accompany her to such or such a ball, to which be probably has not been invited. Ho conveys her there accordingly, u presented as her guest to the lady of the house, leaves her to hor own <leviee3 for tlic eTening, and takes lier homo Again in the small hours. Such mi escort is called " a walking stick," aud the only drawback, said my informants to employing liim is his tendency to hang about his owner atjthe dance, where perhaps ho knows scarcely any one, and to bother her by asking for dances and introductions. He has not even the last resource of the English wallflower, for there are no. chaperons to mnke conversation to ; and one must therefore chose as walking stick a person of some resource who can shift for himself. In the same wav, if n ;\uui]g lady wishes to go to the theatre or opera she may nsk a gentleman to take her there. He cannot well refuse the honour, though it is an expensive one, for carriage hire in New York is about five times as high as in London ; he provides a carriage (if ho has none of his own), calls for her, takes her to the play, and giros her very likely a supper at J)clmonico's afterwards. This is obviously a rather stronger deviation from English ways than the mere absenco of chaperons at parties (in which respect the usage of London does not govern nil our cities), and there are families where it might be thought to savour of fastness. But there seems to be no doubt that unimpeachable people do it, and permit it, and that a girl is not compromised by it.

Miis SoMERViTJiE's Mode of Study. — Her method of writing wan like that of poor Cliarlotte Bronte, CTcoi>t that, instead of sitting on a foot-stool, the put il to its proper use. Shu supported her paper on a sheet of cardboard, winch she held, to obviate stopping. When once established thus, she knew nothing more of concivte things till the morning 1 !, ■work wns done. Dr Somerville w;m loud of tcllmg of a wager lie laid with a friend who would i(ol believe in such a power of abstraction as hers was described to be. The doctor proposed to say whatever he pleased of her by name, at her own work table without herbcingawaroof it ; and the experiment was immediately tried. JTe began with, "Do you know, Mr ■ , that my wife here, Mrs Somerville, paints her face ?" No notice being taken, the charges went on, her numo being more and more loutll> uttered. " She has fahc hair," " her teoth are all false," " otic has the moßt abominable temper, there is uo living with W," nnd so on ; till li.t n.ime being uututtlly shouted, she looked up wilh a quiet " Did jou apeak to me ?" — Daily Newt,.

Hkink and Classical Education'. — Heine's defence of hia classical studies is worth quoting from Ins '' Keisebilder," as an amusing and characteristic piece of irony. He says —"The day after (tlr> ent -y of tho French h-oops into Dussoldorfl") the world was set jliai^lit n^wn, .m I sohool opened again as before, and n~.h lo."e Iv^m the 01.l learning by heart — tho Jtoman Iving:-,, their dales, the no'in* in mi, the irregular verbs, Greek, llebnn , geography, Gei man, o lieulatiou — Heavens, my he id sunns e\en w'ioii I t'liiik ol it — | everything had to'b. 1 liMirnt hy heart. Au.l much of it j served mo a good turn m time For suppose 1 had not | known the list of Roman king* straight oil, it would have | remained a matter of perfect indifference to me Avhether Nicbiihv lias proved or not that they never existed. And if I hadn't learnt all those dates, however should I have managed to get on in that great Berlin, where one house is as like its neighbour as one drop of water or one grenadier is iike another, and where one can never find one's neighbour, unless one has the number of the house in one's head. At that time I thought of some historical occurrence as I met each of my acquaintance, as its date happened to coincide with the number of his house, so that I was easily able to remember the one when I thought of the other, and hence there always occurred to mo some historical occurrence whenever I set my eyes on an acquaintance So, for instance, when my tailor happened to meet me I instantly thought of the battle of Marathon. If I mot my sleek friond Christian Grimpcl, the banker, I thought at once of the destruction of Jerusalem; when I set myejes on a Portuguese friend I had (always over head and ears in debt) I thought of the flight of Mahomet ; when I saw the Proctor of the UniverSl tj — a man w hose uncompromising integrity is well known —I thought at once of Hainan's death ; as soon as I set eyes on Wadzeck I thought of Cleopatra. Oh Heavens ! the poor rascal is dead now ; my tear-vessels are dried up, and one may say with Hamlet, ' Take him for all in all he was an old woman ; his like we shall often sco again ?' As I said, dates are absolutely necessary ; I know persons who had nothing in their heads but n, couple of dates, and thanks to these they were able to find the right houses in Beihn, and now they arc professors m ordinary ! But I had my | troubles at school with my dates, I can assure jou — with regular calculation it was still worse. I understood subtraction best ; there's a very good prictical rule as to this — ' Four from three won't qo — borrow one.' For I advise every one to borrow a few pence more on such occasions — you never can tell ! " Atmospheric ruFssriiii and ito Relation to Suicide. — Mr C. Thomas, F.C S., Adelaide, contributes to the South Australian Register the following abstract of a paper by P. Bert : — "The author discussed in a former paper the action of various barometric pressures gradually produced, and now examines the effects of sudden alterations in pressure, sucli as those to which divers nrc exposed. Sudden increase ol pressure seems to havo little action. Sudden decrease, on tho contrary , produces serious, and even fatal elfects. These are due to tho gases which havo been condensed in the blood during the continuance of tho pressure being set free on its remo\al, cither in quantity or forming bubbles more or less numerous within the blood-vessels. In the former case the circulation is at once arrested, and death occurs almost instantaneously; in the latter, impairment of locomotne power, paraplegia or symptom* of cerebral mischief, such as squinting or madness, are produced. In the cases of paraplegia, the spinal cord undergoes softening with marvellous rapidity, but no trace of hemorrhage has been noted. If the pressure to which tho animal ha» been exposed does not exceed fh c atmospheres, it may be reduced to the normal in two or three minutes without any apparent bad result. If it has reached six atmospheres very serious symptoms may occur, and above seven atmospheres these become constantly fatal. At nineteen atmospheres paralysis and death can only bo avoided by decreasing tho pressure very gradually, live minutes to each atmosphere being too little, and transient paralysis having been noticed even when ten minutes per atmosphere was allowed. Tho blood from an animal exposed to a pressure of four or five atmospheres frequently gives off bubbles of gas, and invariably does so whon tho pressure has reached seven atmospheres. Tho quantity of oxygen in the blood increases with augmented pressure, but very slowly, while it diminishes very rapidly with decreased pressure. Tennyson's Women.— - Yud this love of incasuie and order in complexity shows itself even more lcnuikably in Mr Tennyson's leaning on to tho domestic modern type of women. All his favorite women arc wrnicn of a certain lixed class in social life, usually not the lowest, sometimes comely like Alice the Miller's daughter, and liose, the gardener's daughter, or Dora, or the w ife of Lord Burleigh ; sometimes women of tho drawing loom or the palace, like Maud. Lndy Flora in the " Day -di earn," or the Princess in the poem about women, or Lynette, and Enid, and Elaine, and Guinevere, in the " Idylls of fie King ;" but always women of the quiet and domestic type (except, indeed, the heroine of "The Sisters"), women whom you might meet every day in a modem home, women of the flower-garden kind, rather than of the wild flower kind. He has set even his exquisite poem of the "Sleeping Beauty" m a drawing-room frame- woik, ie, made the " Lady Flora" to whom it is related "take hoi broideiy frame and add a cuinsou to the quaint macaw." In the beautiful little idyll called "The Miller's Daughter, " Mr Tennyson even injures the rustic effect of the piece by introducing an artificial element, a song about Alice's earrings and necklace, a touch which however true it may bo to life — (earrings and necklaces aro just what millers' daughters would most value) is idyllically false as destroying the simplicity of the picture, just as ifc migbt baTO been true to life, but Mould have been idyllically false to call the hcroino Juliana or Matilda, instead of Alice. The simplest and tho most lyrical heroines, heroines like Gretchen in " Faust," or Mignon in " AVilhelm Meister," aro hardly in Mr Tennyson's way. Ho loves something of the air and manner which a fixed social status gives. His " May Queen " has always seemed to me one of his fewfalsetto poems. There is heart, in the sense of complex harmony, in all his greatest poems. — Macmillan's Magazine. The G-alwat Election Trials.— The first of the Galway election trials at Dublin concluded on the 12th February. Father Loftus, one of tho twenty-two ecclesiastics committed on charges arising out of the Galway election petition, was charged with using uuduo influence in February , 1872, when Captain Nolan, the Roman Catholic candidate , was returned, although afterwards unseated in favour of his Protestant opponent, Major Trench. The case excited a good deal of interest, both on account of the charges preferred and the persons against whom they are made. It appeared from the evidence that Father Loftus denounced from the altar all who should vote against their conscience, — this meaning against Captain Nolan, and that tho reverend father used all the terrors of tho Church and of the world to come in order to gain his end. On other less solemn occasions, Father Loftus, it was alleged went beyond tho bounds of law and decorum in encouraging rioting, and shouting such mild sentiments as " Down with tho Landlords ; " in tho hearing of election mobs. Among the least objectionable things he did wa9 to call one of his own hearers a " blackguard " while in church, because be had canvassed tho electors for Trench, oud to extend his censuro even to his hearer's brother, who ho politely designated " a drunken bully." But the jury were discharged because they could not come to a verdict. It is stated that eleven out of the twenty-four were agreed as to the acquittal of the accused. It was not, perhaps, due to any doubt of the evidence to be advanced that such a result was anticipated. A Smeller. — Inquisitive peoplo sometime! meet with .dittle adventures which make them wink. A fellow who was paying attention " to a country girl, stole up to the kitchen where she was at work the other morning, thinking to sec what kind of a housekeeper she was. He got interested as ho stood behind the door all unobserved, watching the fair ono at her toil, and in tho ardour of his observations he intruded his noso into the crack of the iloor. She innocently shut that poor suddenly. He now wears it in a sling The Tuapeka Timn says the General Government arc anxious to appoint Mr Aylmer Warden at Tuapeka, vico Mr Pyke, who is on a year's leave of absence.