In a lecture about girls, Cady Stanton contrasted the buoyant spirit of
young males with the dejected sickliness of immature women. This, she
says, is because the latter are keenly sensitive to the fact that they
have no aim in life. This is a sad, sad truth! No longer ago than last
year the writer’s youngest girl—Gloriana, a skin-milk blonde concern of
fourteen—came pensively up to her father with big tears in her little
eyes, and a forgotten morsel of buttered bread lying unchewed in her
mouth.
“Papa,” murmured the poor thing, “I’m gettin’ awful pokey, and my
clothes don’t seem to set well in the back. My days are full of
ungratified longin’s, and my nights don’t get any better. Papa, I think
society needs turnin’ inside out and scrapin’. I haven’t got nothin’ to
aspire to—no aim; nor anything!”
The desolate creature spilled herself loosely into a cane-bottom chair,
and her sorrow broke “like a great dyke broken.”
The writer lifted her tenderly upon his knee and bit her softly on the
neck.
“Gloriana,” said he, “have you chewed up all that toffy in two days?”
A smothered sob was her frank confession.
“Now, see here, Glo,” continued the parent, rather sternly, “don’t let
me hear any more about ‘aspirations’—which are always adulterated with
_terra alba_—nor ‘aims’—which will give you the gripes like anything.
You just take this two shilling-piece and invest every penny of it in
lollipops!”
You should have seen the fair, bright smile crawl from one of that
innocent’s ears to the other—you should have marked that face sprinkle,
all over with dimples—you ought to have beheld the tears of joy jump
glittering into her eyes and spill all over her father’s clean shirt
that he hadn’t had on more than fifteen minutes! Cady Stanton is
impotent of evil in the Grile family so long as the price of sweets
remains unchanged.