where girls congregate, read papers, and
daringly discuss metaphysical problems and candy--a sloe-eyed,
black-browed, imperious maiden. _Item_, a very small maiden, absolutely
without reverence, who can in one swift sentence trample upon and leave
gasping half a dozen young men. _Item_, a millionnairess, burdened with
her money, lonely, caustic, with a tongue keen as a sword, yearning for
a sphere, but chained up to the rock of her vast possessions. _Item_, a
typewriter-maiden earning her own bread in this big city, because she
doesn't think a girl ought to be a burden on her parents. She quotes
Theophile Gautier, and moves through the world manfully, much respected,
for all her twenty inexperienced summers. _Item_, a woman from Cloudland
who has no history in the past, but is discreetly of the present, and
strives for the confidences of male humanity on the grounds of
"sympathy." (This is not altogether a new type.) _Item_, a girl in a
"dive" blessed with a Greek head and eyes that seem to speak all that is
best and sweetest in the world. But woe is me!--she has no ideas in this
world or the next, beyond the consumption of beer (a commission on each
bottle), and protests that she sings the songs allotted to her nightly
with no more than the vaguest notion of their meaning.

Sweet and comely are the maidens of Devonshire; delicate and of gracious
seeming those who live in the pleasant places of London; fascinating for
all their demureness the damsels of France clinging closely to their
mothers, and with large eyes wondering at the wicked world; excellent in
her own place and to those who understand her is the Anglo-Indian "spin"
in her second season; but the girls of America are above and beyond them
all. They are clever; they can talk. Yea, it is said that they think.
Certainly they have an appearance of so doing. They are original, and
look you between the brows with unabashed eyes as a sister might look at
her brother. They are instructed in the folly and vanity of the male
mind, for they have associated with "the boys" from babyhood, and can
discerningly minister to both vices, or pleasantly snub the possessor.
They possess, moreover, a life among themselves, independent of
masculine associations. They have societies and clubs and unlimited
tea-fights where all the guests are girls. They are self-possessed
without parting with any tenderness that is their sex-right; they
understand; they can take care of themselves;