Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 April 1882 — BROOKLYN GIRLS. [ARTICLE]

BROOKLYN GIRLS.

They are Betntihil and Innocent, but They will Flirt Recklessly. Brooklyn girls always interest me. I mean viewed as a whole. The city has the reputation of having more really pretty young women thhn any other in the Union, and nobody seems to deny it. In Baltimore there are more really beautiful faces, and in Washington and New York more striking and stylish looking women, but for pretty, graceful and charming girls, Brooklyn undoubtedly leads the van. But it is not about their beauty I wish to speak so much as about their extraordinary freedom of action in the streets. In New York a lady is never so circumspect, careful and discreet as when in the thoroughfares unaccompanied by a gentleman. If p woman is at all careless or flirtatious in the street of New York, it simply shows what she is; but in Brooklyn this rule certainly does not hold good. The girls there are allowed the most extraordinary freedom. Their fathers and brothers come to New York to business after breakfast, and do not return till night, and the women are leftentiiely to their own resources, and to the attentions of a class of yonng men who are too young or too indolent to go to business, and spend their time instead iii’tbe afreets. The girls parade up and dbtfn the avenues, o for long trips in Prospect Park, drive and play and shop, but always unattended. This would do well enoiigh as an illustrion of the idea of the early part of frie ceDtury that women in America may go whither she may and always be sate, but toapracf tical observer of to-day the danger oit is glaring. I have watched these Brooklyn girls closely and I am bound to admit that in almost every case the girl devotes thirteen fourteenths of her time in flirting, or trying to “pick, up” or be “picked up” up by some one of the useless young men before alluded to. You walk along Fulton avenue, and first one pretty girl will look over her shoulder and ogle a young man swinging along behind her, and then another girl will smile in a half bashful, but wholly charming way, at a youth struggling with a cigar on the opposite side of the street. He generally smirks in a sheepish way, and sometimes tips his nat awkwardly, but when he meets his friends the story he tells of his “mash” would astonish a Chinaman, The girls are usually between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one years. They are often reckless in flirting, but I wish it understood emphatically that they are almost never vicious. If flirting can be an ‘entirely innocent fastime, it is in most of these cases. t is not often that they ever come to speaking terms with the young men, but the pernicious effect of the pastime or whatever it may be called, is apparent. I think lam safe in saying that tie Brooklyn girls have worse street manners thpn the girls of any great city in the country —New York Letter in Washington Star. The Spanish physician, Dr. Olive, deducts the following conclusion from 119 observations: 1. The cobweb, when taken as a powder, cures daily or. tertian malaria fevers. 2. When adipinistered by two-gramme doses to meh and one-gramme doses to children, it stops fevers usually after" 0® second attack. 8. Its action is n6t so rapid as that of the sulphate of quinine, so, until further researches, cobweb powders ought hot to be used in cases of perulcious fevers. 4. The powder being tastless, is easier to take than quinine, especially fbr children. 5. This remedy is a very good preservative. To make ebbweb powder, clean the cobwebs, drjt them in the sun, and pound them in p mortar. One gets thils ah powder'insoluble in water, and hard-ly-soluflfe Fh alcohol.