Another and very marked characteristic of the public girls? school in its utter absence of sentiment, or more accurately, sentimentality, in direct opposition to the "gush" that prevailed in the days of Miss Pinkerton's Academy. If, however, "gush" is not tolerated, loyalty and friendship are cultivated to the highest degree, and in no modern school would such a "friendship" as that between Becky Sharp and Amelia Sed ley be even remotely possible. Like the small boy who soon learns. to dislike any outward manifestation of affection, the little girl in her first term quickly learns to dispense with the good-night kiss and the endearments of home, But in place of the easily-expressed and facile emotions of childhood, she begins to develop a reserve which covers her deepest feelings, and which in after years enables her to meet with triumph and disaster, and "treat these two impostors just the same.
Perhaps, however. the strongest determining factor in public school life is ite guilding principle of esprit corps. From the moment when she enters school, the girl is made to feel that she is of no importance as a separate entity, but only as part of the whole, and that, just ar unison singing, no one voice must be predominant above the rest, 80 she must use her individual powers, Met for herself, but pro bone publica, This is brought home to her even more emphatically in the cricket and hockey field where she swiftly realizes that she is playing, not for her own personal glory, but for the story of her side.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.