flashes in it," which hair turns white with fright in a single night.

Golden Flashes

This is the girl who sometimes lays herself open to the terrible charge levelled by a writer on the emotions at Sterne and Byron and others of the school of literature to which they belonged. Says Professor Bain, "Some of the sentimental writers, such as Sterne and Byron, seem to have had their capacities of tenderness excited only by ideal objects, and to have been very hard-hearted towards real persons."

This is the girl who said dolefully the other day, "Oh, yes, one meets heaps of men, but they don't propose!" Concerning which speech one can only say that it might with advantage have been left unmade.

This, finally, is the girl whose letters show up the untenability of Miss Bingley's rule, as set forth in Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice.

"It is a rule with me"—so said Miss Bingley—"that a person who can write a long letter with ease cannot write ill."

The average sentimental girl can write a long letter with ease, and can write ill. In a long letter by such a girl which has been placed at my disposal, she constitutes herself petitioner for a poor family, of which she writes, "They are getting into despair as to how to meet their rent, much less food. It is a fearful idea of people in one's own class wanting for food." The sentiment of that is rather narrow, and the wording of it is execrable.

Tact is not always but is sometimes denied to the young sentimental letter-writer. "I have been reading"—so wrote some little time ago a girl to a novelist—"your last book, and have fallen in love with you, and now the thought has come into my head, 'Could not I collect together my feeble attempts at writing and publish them?'"

The writer who is informed that his work has suggested the collecting together of feeble attempts and publishing them is made the recipient of a dubious compliment.

Very often the inducement to do a thing as set forth by the girl-sentimentalist is of a kind not calculated to weigh strongly with persons less sentimental.

A lady of high accomplishments and keen relish of social intercourse asserts that while on the staff of a London High School she suffered for years from the invitations of young girls who, in imploring her to accept their family's hospitality, never failed to emphasise the fact that there would be "nobody else invited."

There is a very general idea that the girl-sentimentalist totally ignores the practical side of life. That is not so.

"I have a short wait here," so writes a girl from the Welsh border. "This letter is the last I shall write on English soil, and I want it to be to you. In spite of good resolutions, I have cried without ceasing since I left —— Not even the evident amusement of a small boy, my vis-a-vie" (spelling is not a strong point with this writer) "could dry up those tears. Dignity doesn't help one to forget an aching heart. I must fly now to see to my luggage."

The heart in a girl like that is balanced by the head, and the same thing is true of the girl-writer of the next letter-extract:

"I look often at his picture upon my table, and wonder why it is there. I am so exquisitely happy, and yet so keenly aware of my own shortcomings. This great new thing that has come into my life makes me feel my own unworthiness. Tell me of all my misspellings, please."

This Great New Thing

The misspellings of the average girl-sentimentalist are legion; in fact, I have heard a schoolmistress say—the speech having been addressed by her to a younger schoolmistress—"Put down sentimentality; it leads to misspelling."

From this schoolmistress I have it that the girl who can spell "parallel," "ridiculous," and "predilection," is rarely an incurable sentimentalist.

My own experience has been that it is the sentimental girl who writes—and says—"rearly" and "warfted," and the following curiosities in spelling are culled from the—unpublished—works of girl-novelists:

"He had suffered the yolk of tyranny."

"She carried a little book, with guilt edges, a prayer-book."

The Yolk of Tyranny

The girl who describes a prayer-book as a book with "guilt" edges is almost guilty of profanation. Tell her this, and so far is this sort of girl from being a hardened sinner that the strong likelihood is that she will never again commit this error. An appeal to her heart is always better than an appeal to her head. This fact was realised by the Israelite who said to a young maiden of this type who had written "sinagog" for "synagogue," "You must not spell the name of our temple like that. It is not only incorrect, but very unkind spelling."

"I will never spell so again," was the young maiden's answer.

Sometimes the defence of her spelling put forward by the girl of sentimental rather than logical bias is very remarkable. "'Court-material,'" said recently a young English damsel who had written "court-material" for "court-martial," "makes quite as much sense to me as 'court-martial.'"

The objection to this form is, of course, that it does not make quite as much sense to other people.

It may be asked now, Does the non-sentimental girl experience no difficulties in connection with spelling? Certainly she does. She was heard the other day saying that the word assassination had been a standing difficulty to her until another girl told her that it began with "two asses" as thus, ass-ass-ination. The non-sentimental girl has also been known to say, looking up from a book—

UNDER A BAD SPELL

"Hullo, here's 'wobble' spelt not with an 'o' but with an 'a'—'wabble.' Now I wonder which is the right spelling."

This is perhaps the place in which to say that there is nothing more difficult than to determine what forms the line of demarcation between the sentimental and the non-sentimental girl. There are persons who assert that a girl who uses the interjection Hullo! may be safely termed non-sentimental, but that is so far from being true that among the girl-readers of this paper there will be one with whom Hullo! is a favourite expletive, and who said, this summer, as a full-blown rose which she was presenting to a person greatly loved by her fell in a shower of petals to the ground, "Even the roses fall at your feet."

That was surely the language of sentiment.

Others assert that girls who wear men's collars with men's neckties may safely be dubbed non-sentimental, but it was a girl in boy's attire to the waist whom the writer of this paper heard say in reference to a beautiful woman to whom she gave the whole homage of the girl's heart that beat under the boyish garb that she favoured, "She is ordered by her doctor to Buxton to drink the waters. Happy waters!"

That was surely the language of sentiment.

If there be aught in a name, it is to be regretted that Angelina is no longer a name much given in baptism, and that no poet of this day follows him who sang in praise of "the dear Amanda." Not that Angelina or Amanda is the best possible name for a sentimental girl. No; such a girl should be called Delia. Mr. Henley has given the