The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890., by Various

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Title: Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890.

Author: Various

Release Date: May 7, 2004 [EBook #12292]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, VOL. 99., JULY 26, 1890. ***

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PUNCH,

OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 99.

July 26, 1890.

MODERN TYPES.

(_BY MR. PUNCH'S OWN TYPE WRITER._)

NO. XVI.--THE HURLINGHAM GIRL.

It is not so easy as it might appear to define the Hurlingham Girl
with complete accuracy. To say of her that she is one whose spirits
are higher than her aspirations, would be true but inadequate. For, at
the best, aspirations are etherial things, and those of the Hurlingham
Girl, if they ever existed, have been so recklessly puffed into space
as to vanish almost entirely from view. In any case they afford a very
unsubstantial basis of comparison to the student who seeks to infer
from them her general character. Yet it would be wrong to assume that
she has dispensed with the etherial on account of her devotion to what
is solid. Indeed nothing is more certain about her than the contempt
with which she has been willingly taught to look upon all the
attainments that are usually dignified with this epithet. History and
geography, classics and mathematics, modern languages (her own and
those of foreign nations), all these she candidly despises. Let others
make their nests upon the shady branches of the tree of learning. For
herself she is fain to soar into the empyrean of society, and to gaze
with undazzled eyes into the sun of the smart set. She has of course
had the advantage of teachers of all sorts, but the claims made upon
her time by thoughtless parents have usually been so great as to leave
her at the end of her school-room period with a few brittle fragments
of knowledge, which shift and change in her mind as the bits of glass
might shift in a kaleidoscope from which the looking-glass had been
omitted. It is enough for her if, in place of historical dates, she
knows the fashionable fixtures, whilst