The meccas of the world; the play of modern life in New York, Paris, Vienna, Madrid and London . rally beautiful galaxy of younggirls in the world; today, since the onslaught ofFrench fashion and artificiality, this is no longer the other hand, it is pitiable to see the hard paintedlines and fixed smile of the women of the world inthe faces of these girls of seventeen and eighteen whowalk up and down the Avenue day after day to stareand be stared at with almost the boldness of a boule-vard trotteuse. Foreigners who watch them from club windowswrite enthusiastic eulogies in their praise
The meccas of the world; the play of modern life in New York, Paris, Vienna, Madrid and London . rally beautiful galaxy of younggirls in the world; today, since the onslaught ofFrench fashion and artificiality, this is no longer the other hand, it is pitiable to see the hard paintedlines and fixed smile of the women of the world inthe faces of these girls of seventeen and eighteen whowalk up and down the Avenue day after day to stareand be stared at with almost the boldness of a boule-vard trotteuse. Foreigners who watch them from club windowswrite enthusiastic eulogies in their praise. To methey seem a terrible travesty on all that youth ismeant to be. They take their models from picturesof French demi-mondaines shown in ultra-daringrace costumes, in the Sunday newspapers; and whomthey fondly believe to be great ladies of society. Ihad almost said that from head to foot they arevictims of an entirely false conception of beauty andgrace; but when it comes to their feet, they aregenuine American, and, so, frank and there is no woman as daintily and appro-. IN REHEARSAL 11 priately shod as the American woman, whose trimshort skirts betray this pleasant fact with every stepshe takes. Nowhere, however, is appearance and its detailmore misrepresentative than in New York. Strangersexclaim at the opulence of the frocks and furs dis-played by even the average woman. They have noidea that the average woman lives in a two-by-fourhall bedroom—or at best a three-room flat; and thatshe has saved and scrimped, or more probably goneinto debt to acquire that one indispensable good cos-tume. Nor could they imagine that her chief joy ina round of sordid days is parade in it as one of theluxurious throng that crowd Fifth Avenue and itsadjacent tea-rooms from four till six every after-noon. Not only the women of Manhattan itself revelin this daily scene; but their neighbors from Brook-lyn, Staten Island, Jersey City and Newark pour inby the hundreds, from th
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1913
