Mr. Grile's Girl.
In a lecture about girls, Cady Stanton contrasted
the buoyant spirit of young males with the dejected
sickliness of immature women. This, she says, is
because the latter are keenly sensitive to the fact
that they have no aim in life. This is a sad, sad
truth! No longer ago than last year the writer's
youngest girl—Gloriana, a skim-milk blonde concern
of fourteen—came pensively up to her father with
big tears in her little eyes, and a forgotten morsel
of buttered bread lying unchewed in her mouth.
“Papa,” murmured the poor thing, “I'm gettin'
awful pokey, and my clothes don't seem to set well
in the back. My days are full of ungratified
longin's, and my nights don't get any better. Papa,
I think society needs turnin' inside out and
scrapin'. I haven't got nothin' to aspire to—no
aim; nor anything!”
The desolate creature spilled herself loosely into
a cane-bottom chair, and her sorrow broke “like
a great dyke broken.”
The writer lifted her tenderly upon his knee and
bit her softly on the neck.
“Gloriana,” said he, “have you chewed up all
that toffy in two days?”
A smothered sob was her frank confession.
“Now, see here, Glo,” continued the parent,
rather sternly, “don't let me hear any more about
`aspirations'—which are always adulterated with
terra alba—nor `aims'—which will give you the
gripes like anything. You just take this two shilling-piece
and invest every penny of it in lollipops!”
You should have seen the fair, bright smile
crawl from one of that innocent's ears to the other
—you should have marked that face sprinkle all
over with dimples—you ought to have beheld the
tears of joy jump glittering into her eyes and spill
all over her father's clean shirt that he hadn't had
on more than fifteen minutes! Cady Stanton is
impotent of evil in the Grile family so long as the
price of sweets remains unchanged.
