[Illustration: _A MARVELL_OUS GIRL] By the old-fashioned girl is not here meant the girl of a type extinct, but the girl of a type still existing, if in less numbers than of old. I have a sheaf of letters by this girl beside me. None of these letters bears date earlier than 1893. One of them, written on Christmas morning of that year, begins— “To-day is just like a beautiful Spring morning, the crocuses and buds showing above ground, and all the buds forward.” A week later, the writer announces— “The weather is so open that Eva was able to pick some rosebuds on Christmas Day.” Under date February 12th, 1894, there is the following— “The kitten Sixpenny is getting plump on bullfinches which the gardener shoots. They do a lot of damage to the fruit-buds.” The same letter contains this communication— “The violets and camellias are backward this year, but all the crocuses and snowdrops are now at their best, and we daily examine daffodil buds.” “Jacob, a jackdaw,” is mentioned in a subsequent letter, where the reference to him runs— “Jacob, a jackdaw, has been lately acquired. He resides in a big aviary, and sometimes has a rabbit put in with him to get change of air.” A girl who writes letters like that is a girl who would have been after the heart of Gilbert White of Selborne. The old-fashioned girl is sentimental in so far as to be sentimental is to have a tender and susceptible heart, for her sentimentality is not of that order the other name of which is mawkishness. In fact, it is of a kind that justifies the singular assertion made by gentle William Shenstone: “The French use the word _naïve_ in such a sense as to be explainable by no English word, unless we will submit to restrain ourselves in the application of the word _sentimental_.” This sentimentality, the other name of which is _naïveté_ of feeling, in the old-fashioned girl led her to say the other day to a woman whom she loved, “I wonderfully admire you,” and _naïveté_ of feeling it is that inspires phrasing so charming as this, which I cite from the letter (date May 1st, 1894) of an old-fashioned girl: “It is four years since I have seen you, my friend, except by letters.” [Illustration: AN INFANT PHENOMENON _There he’s the darlingest dearest cleverest, brightest little fellow in the world. Yes he is._] It has been said in the foregoing that the old-fashioned girl exists in less numbers to-day than in days gone by; so far is she, however, from being as uncommon as the great auk, that I who write this have only to shut my eyes to see a long procession of old-fashioned girls pass before me. First passes Ann (in her own explanatory phrasing, “plain _A-double-N_”), who always brings her letters to a close with “believe me,” and uses a nominative of address in writing a postcard. Next pass Elizabeth, Betsy, Bessy and Bess—no _Elsie_, mark you.