Girls are forced into womanhood by fashion even more rapidly than boys into manhood. They are dressed in the most expensive manner from their infancy, and without much regard to their health. Bare arms and necks, and short skirts are the rule, even in the bleakest weather, for children's parties, or for dancing-school, and so the tender frames of the little ones are subjected to an exposure that often sows the seeds of consumption and other disease. The first thing the child learns is that it is its duty to be pretty--to look its best. It is taught to value dress and show as the great necessities of existence, and is trained in the most extravagant habits. As the girl advances towards maidenhood, she is forced forward, and made to look as much like a woman as possible. Her education is cared for after a fashion, but amounts to very little. She learns to play a little on some musical instrument, to sing a little, to paint a little--in short she acquires but a smattering of everything she undertakes. She is left in ignorance of the real duties of a woman's life--the higher and nobler part of her existence. She marries young, and one of her own set, and her married life is in keeping with her girlhood. She is a creature in which nothing has been fully developed but the passions and the nerves. Her physical constitution amounts to nothing, and soon gives way. Her beauty goes with her health, and she is forced to resort to all manner of devices to preserve her attractions. It is a habit in New York to allow children to give large entertainments at fashionable resorts, without the restraining presence of their elders. Here crowds of boys and girls of a susceptible age assemble under the intoxicating influence of music, gas-light, full dress, late suppers, wines and liquors. Sometimes this juvenile dissipation has been carried so far that it has been sharply rebuked by the public press. V. A FASHIONABLE BELLE. An English writer gives the following clever sketch of a fashionable young lady of New York, whom he offers as a type of the "Girl of the Period:" "Permit me to present you to Miss Flora Van Duysen Briggs. Forget Shakspeare's _dictum_ about a name; there is a story attached to this name which I shall tell you by and by. Miss Flora is a typical New York girl of the period; between sixteen and seventeen years old; a little under the medium height; hair a golden brown; eyes a violet blue; cheeks and lips rosy; teeth whiter and brighter than pearls; hands and feet extremely small and well-shaped; figure _petite_ but exquisitely proportioned; _toilette_ in the latest _mode de Paris_; but observe, above all, that marvellous bloom upon her face, which American girls share with the butterfly, the rose, the peach and the grape, and in which they are unequalled by any other women in the world.