Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VI, November 1850, Vol. IVarious
History
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VI, November 1850, Vol. I
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
The every-day young lady is neither tall nor short, neither fat nor
lean. Her complexion is not fair, but clear, and her color not bright,
but healthy. She is not vulgarly well, but has not the least illness in
the world. Her face is oval, and her hair, moderate in quantity, is
usually of a soft brown. Her features are small and unobtrusive: her
nose being what the French passports call _moyen_--that is, neither one
thing nor t'other--and her eyes as gray as glass, but clear and gentle.
It is not the eyes that give her any little character she has; although,
if you have nothing else to do, and happen to look at them for a minute
or so, they win upon you. They are not varnished eyes, in which you can
see nothing but the brightness; and not deep eyes, into which your soul
plunges as into a gulf: they are mere common skylights, winning into
them a little bit of heaven, and giving you an inkling of good temper
and feminine gentleness. Neither is it her air, nor manner, nor dress,
that stamps her individuality, if she has any, for these belong to the
class of society in which she moves; but altogether she gives you an
idea of young-womanish refinement and amiableness, and you would think
of her again when alone, if there were not so many of her friends about
her as to divide and dilute, as it were, your impressions.
The every-day young lady is usually dependent upon somebody or other,
but sometimes she has a small independence, which is much worse. In the
former case she clings like ivy, adorning, by her truth and gentleness,
the support she is proud of; while in the other she gives her £30 a year
to a relation as an inadequate compensation for her board and clothing,
and lives in a state of unheard-of bondage and awful gratitude. Her life
is diversified by friendships, in which her own feelings last the
longest; by enmities, in which she suffers and forgives; and by
loves--though almost always at second-hand. She is a confidant, a
go-between, a bridemaid; but if she finds herself on the brink of a
serious flirtation, she shrinks into her own foolish little heart in
surprise and timidity, and the affair never becomes any thing but a
mystery, which she carries with her through life, and which makes her
shake her head on occasions, and look conscious and experienced, so as
to give people the idea that this young lady has a history. If the
affair does go on, it is a public wonder how she came to get actually
married. Many persons consider that she must have been playing a part
all along for this very purpose; that her timidity and bashfulness were
assumed, and her self-denial a _ruse_; and that, in point of fact, she
was not by any means what she gave herself out to be--an every-day young
lady.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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