City girl

“ In a city, which shall be nameless, there lived, long ago, a young girl, the only daughter of a widow. She came from the country, and was as ignorant of the dangers of a city, as the squirrels of her native fields. ”

“ The city girl is used to having these things provided for her by the community, and the girl in the country often does not stop to think of the space, light, air and water which are hers so freely and abundantly. ”

“ Here the inexperienced country girl was exposed to petty persecutions from the dashing misses of the city, who pleased themselves with giggling criticisms not inaudible, nor meant to be inaudible to their subject, on whatsoever in dress and manner fell short of the city mark. Then it was first revealed to her young heart, and laid up for future reflection, how large a place in woman's world is given to fashion and frivolity. ”

“ Surely she could ask for no better or larger career than to be able to make in her home town a radiant life for all the young people, full of charm, a counter-charm against which the lure of the city would have no power, and thus keep girl life safe and pure, and prevent the sorrowful fate that would befall her young townswomen if they should yield to the temptation that knocks at their door. ”

“ Now the Earth was most anxious for this City to become a woman because, although the Earth whirled like an enormous engraved ball and seemed like a saucepan held over the sun, still all the time it was really just the Earth, and it was very human and tired and discouraged, and it needed a woman to rest it and to sing to it and to work with it, in her way. ”

“ We have never found in the city more graceful, ladylike, intelligent, pure-minded girls than we have seen in the country; [Pg 109] but we have sometimes noticed that those who live nearest to the city, or have spent much time there, too often acquire artificial habits, affectation, coquetry, loud, bold speech, or a fondness for dress, too stylish for a truly modest girl’s adorning, that is seldom seen in real country life. We do not think that any kind or amount of labor will make one less modest or ladylike. ”

“ He knew the girl so much better than she knew herself. New York bred its great new crop of them every year. The idle, pleasure-hunting girl of the great city—not selfish, merely ignorant that anyone else was living on the planet ”

“ What a terrible thing it is to be young and desolate in the great wicked city of New York! She is so young, guileless and innocent, I hope no ill will befall her. I must remember to look up my friend Ernscourt to learn if he gave her a position or not. I declare, if it were not that I am betrothed to the sweetest girl in all the world, I am afraid I should commit the desperate folly of falling in love with that beautiful, dark-eyed little stranger. ”

“ A shabby-looking girl, with her hair in as much confusion as if the city had contracted to keep it straight, with one ear-ring in her ear, and the other on the table, with her shoes down at the heel, her dress unhooked behind, and her breast-pin wrong side up, was the model young woman who had answered the knock. ”

“ She was but one of thousands of young women whose undisciplined minds are fatally assailed by the subtleties and sophistries of city life, and who have lost their bearings in the midst of a multitude of new imaginative impressions. It is hard for a girl, thrilled by the mere propinquity of city excitements and eager to share them, to keep to the gray and monotonous path of regular work. ”

“ I have no desire to seem to wish to crush a laudable ambition in any girl, but I do most earnestly pray that my girls all over the country will think over this picture of girl life in New York City—the great city of which you read and hear so much—realize its sorrows, its worries, and the small, almost infinitesimal amount of enjoyment in it, and then think of their lives at home. "Helping mother" may grow tiresome, but if you are sick you will be cared for, if you are tired you may rest, and nobody like your own home people will find so much delight in seeing you have a happy time. ”

“ It sounds like somebody tall, very high, and pointed at the top, with the rest of her dark and long and flowy—don’t it?”
“City,” she and I were agreed, sounded like somebody light and sitting down with her skirts spread out.
“Village” sounded like a little soft hollow, not much of any colour, with a steeple to it.
“I like ‘Town’ best,” Mary Elizabeth said. “It sounds more like a mother-woman. ‘City’ sounds like a lady-woman. And ‘Village’ sounds like a grandma-woman. I like ‘Town’ best.”
“What I want to do,” Margaret Amelia said restlessly, “is to spend my Fourth of July dollar. ”

“ GIRL LIFE IN NEW YORK CITY
OU are one among the many thousands who write to tell me that you want to leave home and make your own living. Apparently you never stop to consider that doing your duty as a daughter is earning your own livelihood; but being possessed of a vague spirit of unrest, you want to come to the great metropolis and enter the ranks of the workers, receiving in absolute money what is considered the value of your work. Have you ever thought out what girl life in New York is? ”

“ Take this twentieth-century girl, this American girl who is the finest creation of the ages. A young and healthy girl, the most perfect type of culture possible to the freest and greatest city on earth—New York! She holds absolutely an unreal, untrue position in the scheme of existence. Surrounded by parents, relatives, friends, suitors, and instructive schools of every kind, colleges, institutions, is she really happy, is she really living?”
“Eleanor,” interrupted Carley, earnestly, “she is not.... ”

“ HE country girl, by whom I mean the girl who lives outside of the large cities, has always been very dear to me, because it has not been so very many years since I knew what life in a small town meant, and when, although I was only six miles from a large city, I delighted in calling myself "a country girl." Nowadays the country girl seems to have an idea that in some way her city cousin is superior to her. But my experience among both city and country girls has taught me that the country girl has untold advantages. ”

“ Of the pretty flower girl—she with the engaging manner, and interesting face above a tray of flowers—not much remains to be said, for she has almost become an institution of the past. Thrown upon her own resources, from like causes affecting others of her sex, she was once to be met with in the lobby of every theatre in town, every resort where gentlemen were supposed to frequent, club-houses, drinking saloons, omnibuses, cars, and the streets. ”

“ The police matron said my fears were well founded, and she gave me the address of a working-girls' home over on the East Side, which she said was not the pleasantest place in the world for a well-brought-up girl of refinement and intelligence, such as she took me to be, but was cheap, and in which I would be sure of the protection which any young, inexperienced woman without money needs so badly in this wicked city. ”

“ Every one does the same in a crowded city neighborhood. There comes a time in a girl's life when this sort of thing becomes monotonous. The time came when Annie found sitting on the doorstep and talking about nothing in particular entirely unbearable. So one balmy, inviting spring night she slipped away and went with the lodger to a dance.
The dance hall occupied a big, low-ceiled basement room in a building which was a combination of saloon and tenement house. In one of the front windows of the basement room was hung a gaudy placard: "The Johnny Sullivan Social Club." ”

“ These young people ought to exercise and have ‘fun,’ and they ought to have it together.
“There are various coffee-rooms for temperate men, and various girls’ club-rooms for girls alone, but, so far as I know, scarcely a respectable place in the whole city where an honest, self-respecting, poor girl can go and be able to meet honorable young men, under the protection of those who would see that her natural instincts were gratified without sacrifice of her womanhood. ”

“ She shared in dowries of American girls whose mothers wished for their daughters social acceptance difficult of achievement in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and even Chicago, where the barriers were more formidable than in Paris, Berlin, and even Rome. And through it all, even when two years later she had returned to New York as familiar with the Social Register as the Almanach de Gotha, she never had been in danger of exposure until meeting this girl who surely would tell. You just don't make a Madam joke to a Madam without something up your sleeve. ”

“ Standing on the corner of the Bowery and Grand Street, in New York, when the Third Avenue trains overhead are roaring their way uptown packed with homeward-bound humanity, or on the corner of State and Madison streets, in Chicago, or on the corner of Front and Lehigh streets, in Philadelphia; pausing at the hour of six at the junction of any city's great industrial arteries, you get a full realization of the change. Of the pushing, jostling, clamoring mob, which the sidewalks are much too narrow to contain, observe the preponderance of girls. ”

“ She looked at the little slip bearing her sister's address and wondered. She gazed at the green landscape, now passing in swift review, until her swifter thoughts replaced its impression with vague conjectures of what Chicago might be.
When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. ”

“ There were nights of elusive fog and bashful lamp when one made casual acquaintance on the way home with some darling little work-girl, Ethel, or Katie, or Mabel, brown-haired or golden, and walked with her and perhaps were allowed to kiss her Good-night at this or that crossing.
What romantic charm those little London work-girls have, with their short, tossing frocks and tumbling hair! [Pg 22] There are no other work-girls in the world to compare with them for sheer witchery of face and character. The New York work-girl is a holy terror. ”

“ The girls, too often, grow up even more pitiable and deserted. Till of late no one has ever cared for them. They are the crosswalk sweepers, the little apple-peddlers, and candy-sellers of our city; or, by more questionable means, they earn their scanty bread. They traverse the low, vile streets alone, and live without mother or friends, or any share in what we should call a home. ”

“ It held me, that voice, while the speaker touched on the urgent need of workers to fill the places of men, who had gone from farm, field, dairy and byre.
Ah, the charming picture that she made! A bright, sturdy flower of girlhood set against-the parched stone-work of Town! She wore the Land Girl's uniform that sets off a woman's shape as no other costume has done yet. Under her slouch-hat her face was vividly brown and rose-coloured, with dark eyes alight. Her fresh, light belted smock, with its green armlet and scarlet crown, looked cool as well as trim. ”

“ By the time we reached Virginia City I was considered a remarkable good shot and a fearless rider for a girl of my age. ”

“ This difficulty has been further increased by the desire to escape the danger of overemphasizing women’s activities in great cities and of omitting the no less viimportant and significant work of women in smaller towns. Even at the risk of distorting the perspective by giving much space to minor cities and to local club activities, it has seemed worth while to make the book truly representative of American urban life as a whole. All city dwellers do not live in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. ”

“ The Blythe Girls, three in number, were left alone in New York City. Helen, who went in for art and music, kept the little flat uptown, while Margy, just out of business school, obtained a position as secretary and Rose, plain-spoken and business like, took what she called a “job” in a department store. The experiences of these girls make fascinating reading—life in the great metropolis is thrilling and full of strange adventures and surprises. ”

“ IV. I Grow into The Fairie Boy.
At sixteen, I entered a college in New York City. I alone was responsible for the scene of my university training. I had frequently visited New York and wished to reside there. But I had then no intention of ever yielding to my detested instincts for female-impersonation. I had not realized that residence in a great city would make temptation far stronger than in a village. My being fated to make my home in New York almost throughout my adulthood has had a tremendous influence on my life, particularly from nineteen to thirty-one. ”

“ But in addition to this to be sympathetic without being partial or sentimental; to be able to care for the tired and sick; to be patient and firm with the hysterical; to understand and direct youth, gayety and extravagance; and to help the girls who are in danger of losing their “woman’s heritage,” a woman must give the best that is in her. The Eleanor Clubs in Chicago; the Ladies’ Christian Union Houses, the Chelsea House Association and the Virginia in New York; and the Girl’s Friendly Society Lodges in New York, Providence and Louisville are helping to solve the housing problem for girls. ”

“ On the rare occasions when she had accompanied her mother to Chicago, the two women had found delight in wandering about the city's foreign quarters. When other small-town women buyers snatched occasional moments of leisure for the theater or personal shopping, these two had spent hours in the ghetto around Jefferson and Taylor, and Fourteenth Streets. Something in the sight of these people—alien, hopeful, emotional, often grotesque—thrilled and interested both the women. ”