The Roanoke Times

THE AMERICAN GIRL.

No Longer the Courageous Creature That She Was.

The American girl of a decade ago has effaced herself, says Charles Dudley Warner in Harper's Magazine. She is no longer the daring, courageous creature. In England, in France, in Germany, in Italy, she takes, as one may say, the color of the land. The satirist will find no more abroad the American girl of the type whom he continues to describe. The knowing and fascinating creature has changed her tactics altogether, and the change has reacted on American society. The mother has come once more to the front, and even if she is obliged to own to forty-five years to the census taker, she has again the position and the privilege of the blooming woman of thirty. Her daughters walk meekly and with downcast (if still expectant) eyes and wait for a sign. * * * It is enough now to notice that a change is going on, due to the effect of foreign society upon American women, and to express the patriotic belief that whatever forms of etiquette she may bow to the American girl will still be on earth the last and best gift of God to man.