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From a Chicago paper is taken the following letter, written by a lady who signs herself "schoolmarm." It will be read with interest by the men who composed the party mentioned below, and, for that matter, by the students of the entire University.
"Do our young ladies appreciate their good fortune in being born in America? Do our young men appreciate their many privileges? A sojourner in your great city would like to say her little say in praise of "Young America." Who of another country than this could tell this story.
Just before our Christmas holiday, a little down east "schoolmarm" desired to take her hand bag and start for Chicago. From Mame to Illinois, to her, seemed a great distance, for never had she ventured from the shadow of her native hills, never gone beyond the sound of dear old Ocean. More than this she must go alone-"a woeful, solitaire mayd." Nothing daunted by slories of disagreeable things which interested friends took pains to relate were sure to happen at this particular season of the year, she enters the sleeper, (for the first time in her life) in Boston, one Saturday night, only to behold with horror the worst of these stories true-she is to be the only lady in this car!
Not quite so bad, as all the way however, for one dear old lady did keep her company the first night, but no further, so that Sunday until Monday noon saw her in Chicago, she was at the mercy of a car full of Harvard Students, who were the other occupants of the car! Thank of this! The first long journey, first experience in a sleeper, and if not her first with young men, certainly the only time they had been exclusively Cambridge students. What would an English matron say at the mention of dangerous sophomores and freshly freshmen as travelling companions of a young lady? Yet safe and unharmed from that journey, she who knows such peril, wishes to pay tribute to all American young men, and give praise to these representatives of a New England University, and your own great city, for they were all Chicago men. by saying that if one is looking for a type of young gentleman hood, young knights sans peuret sans reproche,-such are to be found wherever a lady is alone and dependant upon the consideration and courtesy of American men.
Not once all day long did these young men speak to their unknown companion, or, as far as she could tell, take any notice of her whatever. They simply pursued their own way, and let her, from her quiet corner, enjoy it all undisturbed.
The ice was a little broken when one young man happened to be just on hand to see the lone damsel safely back from the remote dining room car. He was quite a hero among the others after that!
When the shades of evening came, a very natural desire to sing stirred them, so they persuaded a middle aged man, found for the occasion, to ask the school-farm if it would disturb her, etc., etc. Her hearty approval of the plan, her evident enjoyment of the cornet solo and college songs which followed, and still more the fact that she joined in and sang with them whenever she chanced to know the air, made things quite social, and the young men showed their appreciation by singing "Sweet Dreams Ladies," in an off hand manner, just as the one lone representative of the fair sex was unromantically, she hopes gracefully, ascending to the comfort of an upper berth. This was the only familiarity, surely a mild one, and is it not credible to any society, to any country that such a thing as this can be done? That girls and women can go safely, comfortably, happily from one end of this country to the other, with only their own quiet and modest behavior as a protector. An American man never seems to question the propriety at all. One glance tells him the lady, alone, helpless, in need perhaps of some service. He does the right thing at the right time, as by a fine instinct, which is surely wanting in the men of many older countries. The American men, young and old, are the gentlemen of the age!"
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