66 Schoolgirls. By Schierbrand, Wolf von

What brighter, sunnier than a bevy of American school girls? How happy they are! Life to them seems as yet a perennial picnic. Can’t you read their love of fun in their smiling eyes? The tricks they are sure to play at school to-day; the saucy answer to rude boys that one can read on their half-parted lips! And yet, at the same time, the affectionate nature they show, and the entire absence of all affectation!

They’re a healthy type of our shifting, many-tongued street life. No schoolgirls in the universe are jollier, cleverer, more ambitious or nicer than are our American girls. Romping with the boys, coasting and skating with the best of them, trundling their hoops with the speed and agility of greyhounds, and playing lawn tennis till their young backs ache, they are yet thoroughly girlish - though not what one of them termed “girly girls.” Try them at flirting yes, even the girls in the short frocks and you’ll soon find there’s a heap of pure femininity concealed about their slender anatomy. But try them also with their books, to be fair about it. You’ll find, in nine cases out of ten, they know more than boys of the same age. They can jump and play, run and catch ball, but they can also sit at home and “do” a heap more difficult mathematics than Jack and Will, their sturdier playmates. Take it altogether, our American schoolgirls are made of pretty good stuff, the stuff which makes good wives and good mothers, good breadwinners and true mates. Nowhere else in this broad land of ours will the future American of the feminine gender show forth more gloriously than right here.



Dieses Kapitel ist Teil des Buches STREET TYPES GREAT AMERICAN CITIES