MISS NOUGAT.

DEAR HERALD : I have heard so much lately about that much-abused institution, sneeringly called the modern girl, that I just want to say a few things about her myself. I don't know whether it is "all put on" or not, but do you know that the very ones who talk the most slightingly about that "flimsy creachaw, you know," are the ones who are constantly trying to catch the "wegulah buttah-fly," and who usually get nothing for their labors but - left.

I think it is Thackeray who, in one of his most charming pictures of real life, says he can't but accept the world as he finds it, including a rope's end, as long as it is in fashion. We know that Thackeray was rather eccentric and we surely need no other evidence of his individuality of character than the expression of this very sentiment. For most people admire only the things that belong to antiquity, fancying that nothing can be really good until it has been dead and buried a hundred years.

What earnest appeals we have from social moralists for the recovery of that lost art, "the old-fashioned girl," the girl who didn't wear bangs, nor high-heels, nor pull-backs; the girl who sewed, cooked and swept, instead of reading love novels and, like Boccacio, living them, as do the trifling flirts of today.

It is doubtless true that women of the present time do not do as much physical work as women formerly did, but you should remember that society, like language, abandons only that for which it has no longer use. The natural progress of society has made it desirable for women to devote more attention to the cultivation of her intellect and of those talents which make her what we broadly term "accomplished."

We need not be surprised at the criticism of the present mode of dress, for it has always been the hobby among a certain class, consisting usually of dyspeptic men and old maids, to rail at the prevailing style of female apparel. Even in the frivolous times of James I. we find in a sermon preached at Whitehall a reference to "the French, the Spanish and the Polish fashions of giddy women." But really the ladies' dress of today is the very opposite of extravagant when compared with that of comparatively recent times. The "pull-back" is just as modest as the hoop-skirt, and as to those much-abused bangs it has always been a mystery to me what the average male intellect could see so utterly soul-destroying in a very becoming mode of dressing the hair. But you know that a certain minister went so far as to forbid the young ladies of his church wearing the alluring bang. Of course you have read Mr. Grant's clever little book, "Confession of a Frivolous Girl," and perhaps you know many, many Alice Palmers, and some who flirt even more than did the lovely blonde or pretty Daisy Miller. Yet surely no one would say that the girls of today are not as good as those that our grandfathers loved. If you think that we live in a state of society not as pure as that of a hundred years ago, read Richardson's "Clarissa," or Fielding's "Amelia," or "Tom Jones."

Complain and find fault as you may, you must acknowledge that the modern miss is, after all, a pretty nice institution and one that you wouldn't care to part with. Why grumble at their vanity, you silly fellow, when you are the only one to profit by it! Yours,

MERTHY NOUGAT.P. S. One of the girls has just read this over, and she said that I had better tell you not to let it drop on anything because it is so heavy it might break something. I don't see what she means, for I wrote it on very light paper.

M. N.