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LX.
the shy graces.
the question is sometimes asked, and even reformers occasionally ask it of themselves, What is to become, in the years when women are educated at college and emancipated from control, of the shy graces that adorned the savage woman?
There is a certain delicate charm that seems historically inseparable from an humble and subordinate condition.
We find it in the uncivilized woman everywhere, among the rudest Cossacks or Hottentots.
Who that has seen a tribe of Indians untouched by contact with the white man can fail to recall the modest bearing, the downcast eyes, the low and musical voices, of the younger girls?
In higher grades of civilization the same type is often visible in girls bred in convents or beneath some kindred religious rule.
The whole aim of chaperonage in society is to prolong or counterfeit this tradition; the very name of “bud” implies something modest, half-closed, untouched.
Will not the very tradition of that charming sweetness disappear when the young woman goes to a public school, is educated at a college,
