Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1882 — The Same Girl. [ARTICLE]

The Same Girl.

The girl with the loflg hair has appeared again, or, more correctly speaking, the usual paragraph as to her has begun to go the rounds of the press, She is, of course, young and beautiful, her hair is jet black and measures exactly five feet seven inches in length,so that it trails on the floor when she walks with her hair down; it is permanently attached to her head,, and she has never felt a moment’s headache. This same girl—or paragraph—appears every : two years. The first recorded appearance was in a country town-in 1842.; and any one who con* suits the file of a good daily newspaper will find her recurring every two years since that time. It should be noted that she has never once appeared in any city, but always in a remote rurjal village, and that she invariably asserts that She has never felt a moments headache. Now, it must have struck many thoughtful persons that it is very odd that this girl, with her wealth of black hair, has never followed the example of bearded women. and put herselfon profitable exhibition. It- is still more odd tb*t no one has eVer seen this long-haired girl or ever personally known any one who has seen her. The evidence of heir existence is strictly confined to newspaper paragraphs, and of direct personal or pictoral testimony to her existence there is no scrap. The cdn-. elusion which inevitably suggests itself to a man of cool judgement and scientific h*bit of thought is that no such girl exists or ever has existed. The back hair of woman is asserted, in all works on physiology and by all scientific men who have examined the subject; to be detachable. In the free, untrammeled atmosphere of the West no women thinks for a moment of pretending that her back hair is permanently attached to her scalp, and in the hotels of Chicago, Bt. Louis and Cincinnati ladies on retiring to their rooms for the night invariably hang their back hair on the outside knob of the door, so that iinnay be brushed and braided by the servant employed for that purpose. In older and more conventional regions there is not this frank acklowledgment of the true character of back hair, but nevertheless no one entertains any delusion as to it. Cuvier and Buffon both speak of detachable back bair as consisting of one of the distinguishing characteristics of our species. Prof. Huxley, in his latest contribution to anthropology, says that on one occasion he examined the back hair of sixty-three girls who were employed in a Manchester mill, and found that every one of then* had taken oft her back hair on entering the mill and hung it up with her bonnet and shawl, her object being to avoid the danger that her hair might become entangled with the machinery. He further says that “there is not a single well established example of a woman with permanent back bair.” In the face of all these well-established facts and this weight of scientific opinion, how can we believe in the existence of the bienniel young woman with permanent back hair five feet seven inches in length ? In point of fact, the testimony as to her existence is nothing like as plausible as the testimony in favor of the existence of the sea-serpent. Men who say that they have seen the latter animal have themselves been seen and handled by other men, but the men who say they have seen the girl with the long black hair cannot be identified. The paragraph describing the alleged girl is always furnished to the original newspaper in which it appears by an annoymous correspondent or one who writes under a feigued name. For example, the most recent paragraph of this sort alleged that the name of the long-haired girl was Miss Minnie Smith, of Lancaster, N. Y., and was ostensibly written by T. S. Withers, of that place. Careful inquiry shows that there is no such place as Lancaster; that Mr. T. 8. Withers was never there in his Jife, and that the oldest inhabitant never heard of Miss Minnie Smith. It is evident that the paragraphs concerning girls with five feet seven inches of black hair are totally false and areuwritten for some mysterious purpose by some unknown forger. There is, however, a very simple explanation of the matter. It is a wellestablished fact that different varieties of ardent spirits when drank to excess produce different sorts of visions. Thus, New England or Jamaica rum leads its victims to see seaserpents— thp New England variety differing from the Jamaica in the length of tfieir alleged manes, Brandy Invariably reveals vast quantities of snakes, and when adulterated with stryohnine produces visions of swarms of insects. Our own native whisky conjures up visions of rats, and from the size and color of the rats the ex-

| pert physician can tell whether the | atient has been drinking rye-whisky or wheat-whisky. Now, what is more probable than that girls, with long black hair trailing on the ground are the result of indulgence in that favorite tipple of the country—cider-bran-dy or apple-jack? The victim of overindulgence in this deceitful beverage finally reaches the point where, to his disordered vision, there presents herself an imaginary girl with long back hair. If he happens to be addicted to writing to or for the newspapers he instantly sits down and writes an account of his vision. Before investigators can discover him he dies and is buried, and no one suspects him of having palmed off upon an innocent newspaper a delirious dream as a valuable news item.