The old-fashioned girl is not always handled tenderly by the new-fashioned girl. “Here’s a description of you,” so sneers one Muriel, and reads aloud from a book, “A young lady in the possession of all the virtues which adorn the most amiable of her sex.” To which the Mary sneered at answers, “No, no; that flatters me.” Lastly, there passes Emma, the old-fashioned girl who heard lately with amazement that (so the new-fashioned girl phrased the matter) “cut glass is vulgar.” “How can,” said Emma, “_glass_ be vulgar?” Emma lives in a world in which not only is cut glass still in estimation, but in which the word “vulgar” is used in a sense in which it is inapplicable to glass. Emma is very fastidious in regard to phrasing. She is never caught using the form “different _to_,” and she follows the rule which prescribes the use of “better,” where the ungrammatical say “best.” Of her adjectives, which are few and carefully chosen, a favourite one is “elegant,” which she uses elegantly. Her spelling has an old-fashioned look. Thus she writes _shew_, _sew_, _ribband_ and _bason_. She prefers _carven_ to “carved,” and, in regard to another past participle, she is open to the gentle satire of the _Cornhill_ essayist, who wrote in 1885 of “very young ladies” what follows— “They write first, ‘his health was drunk,’ and then, alarmed at the apparent inebriety of that harmless past participle, alter it incontinently to ‘his health was drank.’” [Illustration: REDGAUNTLET AND BLUE-STOCKING A NOVEL COMBINATION] Emma prefers the sound of “his health was drank” to that of “his health was drunk.” Such archaisms as _to pen_ for _to write_, and _a braid of hair_ for _a plait of hair_, are also in favour with Emma, though her notions in style have undergone some modification since she wrote her first English composition, which began, “I sit down to write an essay.” Emma is at present engaged upon writing a novel in letter form, modelled on Sir Walter Scott’s _Redgauntlet_. That is a secret. Emma has many secrets. New-fashioned girls are said to have none. Never believe it! Perhaps the old-fashioned girl is seen to least advantage in a new-fashioned school. The modern system of examination perplexes her. It was not quite a dunce, but merely a bewildered old-fashioned girl who wrote what follows in obedience to the injunction, “Comment on the grammatical peculiarity in the sentence—‘Cromwell was by far our remarkablest governor.’” “_Carlyle did not know better English, or perhaps he wanted to make a joke._” Not that the old-fashioned girl is not sometimes a frank ignoramus. This must be allowed to be the case when she defines—I cite here from authentic documents—_phenomenon_ as “a very bad-tempered person,” and _emolument_ as “great flattery.” In dialogue with the new-fashioned girl the old-fashioned girl does not always come off best, but once and again she scores, if only by the utterance of a bold paradox. Take the following.