The School Girl's Corner

Further Hints for those Girls Who Are About to Come East to be Finished

DONALD OGDEN STEWART

SINCE the announcement, last month, of the opening of our educational bureau for the benefit of young misses who are coming East to school this fall, Mr. Elwell G. Fish, the director of the bureau, has been deluged with letters asking his advice on the various complex problems of young girlhood. Mr. Fish wishes to state again that it is necessary for the inquirer to enclose a recent photograph with her letter in order that he may know whether or not to give it his personal attention. Mr. Fish discovered long ago that the girl whose writing paper smells like Mary Garden, often looks like Carbona, and, Mr. Tuxedo to the contrary, "your nose doesn't know".

Mr. Fish does not, however, wish to be too severe on those girls who perhaps unwittingly disregarded his rule concerning photographs, and he therefore prints below the answers to their questions. In some cases, however, it has been utterly impossible under the present laws of the state of New York to publish the correct answer and, in this connection, if Tilly Sof Little Rock, Ark., will telephone Mr. Fish immediately upon her arrival in New York, she will learn something to her advantage.

The answers follow:

Elsie D-, St. Jo, Mo.: Try Djer Kiss.

Marie G-, Minneapolis, Minn.: You should have stuck to Scotch and plain water. Better luck next time.

Elinor D-, Kansas City, Mo.: Lemon juice and salt. Were there no benches near the first tee?

Louise P-, San Francisco, Cal.: What a question. Decidedly not. Besides, how could we get rid of your aunt?

Pansy B-, Joplin, Mo.: (a) I am sorry for you, dear. I knew a girl whose front teeth stuck out just like yours and she is very happy, they say, in her church and literary work. Perhaps you, too, will some day come to a realization that marriage and social success are empty vanities, (b) No, I shall not be in New York when you arrive. Sorry.

Ethel D-, Wichita, Kan.: Well, let them talk. They look at those things differently here in the East. And wasn't it fun?

Henriette McD-, Northampton, Mass.: That doesn't sound like a Yale man. Perhaps he was engaged, or sick.

Mabel C-, St. Louis, Mo.: (a) Dear, I am going to be quite frank with you. It isn't your money that keeps young men away from you. (b) Cut out sweets and starchy food; eat only one meal a day; exercise hard. I have known girls to take off forty pounds in summer.

Anne V-, Omaha, Neb.: Your mother is quite right, dear girl. Jim may be a splendid fellow, and no doubt has higher ideals and more character than the young men of your "set." But that isn't the idea of matrimony. Wait till you have been in the East a while.

Helen H-, Denver, Colo.: Perhaps you had better have your adenoids removed, dearie.

Mary Virginia L-, Atlanta, Ga.: You silly girl. Champagne and gin and Bourbon never mix.

The first week of school life is apt to be quite discouraging, and we cannot too emphatically warn the young girl not to do anything rash under the influence of homesickness. It is in this initial period that many girls, feeling utterly alone and friendless, write those letters to boys back home which are later so difficult to pass off with a laugh. It is during this first attack of homesickness also that many girls, in their loneliness, recklessly accept the friendship of other strange girls, only to find out later that their new acquaintance's mother was a Miss Gundlefinger of Council Bluffs, or that she lives on the south side of Chicago. We advise: Go slow at first.

In your first day at school you will be shown your room; in your room you will find a sadeyed fat girl. You will be told that this will be your room mate for the year. You will find that you have drawn a blank, that she comes from Topeka, Kan., that her paw made his money in oil, and that she is religious. You will be nice to her for the first week, because you aren't taking any chances at the start; you will tolerate her for the rest of the year, because she will do your lessons for you every night.

Across the hall from you there will be two older girls who are back for their second year. One of them will remind you of the angel painted on the ceiling of the Victory theatre back home, until she starts telling about her summer at Narragansett; from the other you will learn how to inhale.

Visitors

ABOUT the middle of the first term your cousin Charley Waldron, that freshman at Princeton, will write and say that he would like to come up and see you. You go to Miss French and ask her if you can have your cousin visit you. She sniffs at the "cousin" and tells you that she must have a letter from Charley's father, one from Charley's minister, one from the governor of your state, and one from some disinterested party certifying that Charley has never been in the penitentiary, has never committed arson, and is a legitimate child. After you have secured these letters, Miss French will tell you that Charley will be allowed to see you next Saturday from four till five.

Charley will come and will be ushered into the reception room. While he is sitting there alone, the entire school will walk slowly, one by one, past the open door and look in at him. This will cause Charley to perspire freely and to wish to God he had worn his dark suit.

While it is true that at some of the older and more financially secure finishing schools a certain amount of study is required, I do not think that this need bother you. In the first place, the aim of your education is successful matrimony, which means simply that the picture of your wedding party appears in Town and Country or Spur. And for that reason it does not pay to bother too much with those studies which have to do with the training of the intellect. It will be necessary, however, for you to acquire a certain amount of education in order that you may talk intelligently at dinner parties or teas. I would advise, for instance, that you learn the names of several of the better painters, writers, and musicians. After all, your great task in school is that of equipping yourself for the life of a successful listener, and if, in the course of your journey through the halls of learning you acquire the ability to use certain phrases—"Yes, poor Van Gogh"—"except, of course, Goethe"—"not, surely, Mendelssohn"—your parents' fond desire that their child be really educated will not have been in vain.

It is not at all likely that you will be allowed to go to New Haven during your first year, which is quite a pity, as this city, founded in 1638, is rich in historical interest. It was here, for example, in 1893, that Yale defeated Harvard at football, and the historic pigskin which was used that day is still preserved intact. Many other quaint relics are to be seen in and around the city of elms, mementos of the past which bring to the younger generation a knowledge and respect for things gone. In the month of June, for example, there is really nothing which quite conjures up for the college youth of to-day a sense of the mutability and impermanence of this mortal life so much as the sight of a member of the class of 1875 after three days intensive drinking. Ehu fugaces!