Look at the girl half
clad, sleeping in the lazy sun that falls across her narrow doorway,
droning out life; now and then, in an hour of wakefulness, muttering
some coarse word. And then regard the over-cultured, the wrongly-bred
girl; the peevish, dictatorial, selfish, haughty miss of a certain
other door-way,--a parlor-way. The womanliness in both would not amount
to so much as is in one bright gleam from the eye of an Evangeline.
We cannot tell so much what womanliness _is_ in girls as what it _does_.
It lies mostly in the little acts they perform,--those things which are
so often done that we neglect to speak of their worth, and yet should
feel most sad without them. The humblest deeds, the oft-repeated ones,
form the beauty of characters and faces. They put beautiful lights into
girls' eyes, softness into their cheeks, and winsomeness into the whole
face. Then, too, deference to the feelings and notions of others has
much to do with the sweetness of womanhood. It cannot be wrong to read a
letter on the street, to shout to one's friend on the opposite side of
the way, to whistle to a horse-car driver; but, so long as these offend
preconceived notions of good manners, deference to the opinions of
others should forbid such habits.
Now let us see, just once more, what we mean by a womanly girl. Exact
attention to points of etiquette, gracefulness, accomplishments, proper
subservience to the will of others, do not of themselves make
womanliness; many more than these characteristics, and greater, are
needful.
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