nd little courtesies, will probably never be determined--except by actual
examples. Yet it is safe to fall back on Miss Edgeworth's maxim in "Helen,"
that "Every one who makes goodness disagreeable commits high treason
against virtue." And it is not a pleasant result of our good deeds, that
others should be immediately driven into bad deeds by the burning desire to
be unlike us.

GIRLSTEROUSNESS

They tell the story of a little boy, a young scion of the house of Beecher,
that, on being rebuked for some noisy proceeding, in which his little
sister had also shared, he claimed that she also should be included in the
indictment. "If a boy makes too much noise," he said, "you tell him he
mustn't be boisterous. Well, then, when a girl makes just as much noise,
you ought to tell her not to be so _girlsterous_."

I think that we should accept, with a sense of gratitude, this addition to
the language. It supplies a name for a special phase of feminine demeanor,
inevitably brought out of modern womanhood. Any transitional state of
society develops some evil with the good. Good results are unquestionably
proceeding from the greater freedom now allowed to women. The drawback is
that we are developing, here and now, more of "girlsterousness" than is apt
to be seen in less enlightened countries.

The more complete the subjection of woman, the more "subdued" in every
sense she is. The typical woman of savage life is, at least in youth,
gentle, shy, retiring, timid. A Bedouin woman is modest and humble; an
Indian girl has a voice "gentle and low." The utmost stretch of the
imagination cannot picture either of them as "girlsterous." That perilous
quality can only come as woman is educated, self-respecting, emancipated.
"Girlsterousness" is the excess attendant on that virtue, the shadow which
accompanies that light. It is more visible in England than in France, in
America than in England.

It is to be observed, that, if a girl wishes to be noisy, she can be as
noisy as anybody. Her noise, if less clamorous, is more shrill and
penetrating. The shrieks of schoolgirls, playing in the yard at
recess-time, seem to drown the voices of the boys. As you enter an evening
party, it is the women's tones you hear most conspicuously. There is no
defect in the organ, but at least an adequate vigor. In travelling by rail,
when sitting near some rather underbred party of youths and damsels, I have
commonly noticed that the girls were the no