The Project Gutenberg eBook, Different Girls, by Various, Edited by
William Dean Howells and Henry Mills Alden

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Title: Different Girls

Author: Various

Release Date: January 20, 2005 [eBook #14744]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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DIFFERENT GIRLS

Harper's Novelettes

Edited by

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS and HENRY MILLS ALDEN

Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York and London

1895, 1896, 1897, 1904, 1905, 1906

RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
"THE LITTLE JOYS OF MARGARET"

ELIZABETH JORDAN
"KITTIE'S SISTER JOSEPHINE"

ALICE BROWN
"THE WIZARD'S TOUCH"

CHARLES B. DE CAMP
"THE BITTER CUP"

MARY APPLEWHITE BACON
"HIS SISTER"

ELEANOR A. HALLOWELL
"THE PERFECT YEAR"

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
"EDITHA"

OCTAVE THANET
"THE STOUT MISS HOPKINS'S BICYCLE"

MARY M. MEARS
"THE MARRYING OF ESTHER"

JULIAN RALPH
"CORDELIA'S NIGHT OF ROMANCE"

E. A. ALEXANDER
"THE PRIZE-FUND BENEFICIARY"

Introduction

It is many years now since the American Girl began to engage the
consciousness of the American novelist. Before the expansive period
following the Civil War, in the later eighteen-sixties and the earlier
eighteen-seventies, she had of course been his heroine, unless he went
abroad for one in court circles, or back for one in the feudal ages.
Until the time noted, she had been a heroine and then an American girl.
After that she was an American girl, and then a heroine; and she was
often studied against foreign backgrounds, in contrast with other
international figures, and her value ascertained in comparison with
their valuelessness, though sometimes she was portrayed in those poses
of flirtation of which she was born mistress. Even in these her
superiority to all other kinds of girls was insinuated if not asserted.

The young ladies in the present collection are all American girls but
one, if we are to suppose Mr. Le Gallienne's winning type to be of the
same English origin as himself. We can be sur