THE ATHLETIC GIRL.
Wanted: A groom, tall, good-looking, steady.
Wanted: A housemaid, neat, respectable, no fringe.
Wanted: A cook, good, plain.
So run certain familiar advertisements. They are cited here as containing the descriptive words which have a particular applicability to the athletic girl, who, to state the general case in regard to her, is tall, good-looking, steady; neat, respectable, with no fringe; good, plain.
The athletic girl
This fact notwithstanding, the average athletic girl would not make a successful groom; still less would she give satisfaction as a housemaid; and least of all has she in her the makings of a good cook. Some hold that she has in her the makings of a good pianist, but that is a mistake, for she has no adagio. “I call a girl like that a fortist, not a pianist,” was said of her the other day.
Not always, but very often, the athletic girl’s is the prosaic type of mind, concerning which Lowell writes—
“The danger of the prosaic type of mind lies in the stolid sense of superiority which blinds it to everything ideal, to the use of everything that does not serve the practical purposes of life. Do we not remember how the all-observing and all-fathoming Shakespeare has typified this in Bottom the Weaver? Surrounded by all the fairy creations of fancy, he sends one to fetch him the bag of a humble-bee, and can find no better employment for Mustard-seed than to help Cavalero Cobweb scratch his ass’s head between the ears. When Titania, queen of that fair, ideal world, offers him a feast of beauty, he says he has a good stomach to a pottle of hay!”