The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 8, 1901, Page 5

i < S S e .« A - SOMETHING ABOUT THE MAIDEN WHOSE HISTRI- ONIC EFFORTS ARE A JOY AND PLEASURE TO HER FRIENDS—ALSO A LITTLE CONCERNING THATOTHER ONE WHO THINKS SHE POSSESSES TALENT BUT PROVES AN AWFUL BORE. [ TV\AAIONDIFFERENT TYPES. ] | BE ONE, NOT THE OTHER. T AR O you happen to know her? If not, you may consider yourself fortu- tunate indeed. Lives there a man with soul so dead that he really- enjoys hearing the amateur elocu- tion of a schoolgirl? It is said that *‘love is blind,” and so, alas, are the mothers and relatives of embryo, would-be elocu- tionists of the feminine persuasion. Oh, girls, why will you do it? Are there not other arts which would be less obtrusive and harm no one but your- selves? Could you not take up a fad of some kind—something which would not of nec- esuity have to be inflicted upon a long- suffering public—golf, tennis, CGreek, ‘any« thing rather than this absurd ranting and rolling of eyes and wringing of hands which makes your audience feel ashamed for you, and which no one under the blue sky ecares for except your poor, love-~ blinded maternal ancestor, and perhaps, by chance, the paternal also? Not one girl in a thousand has ahy real talent for elocution, and yet it seems to us about half of the girls nowadays are laboring under the fatal delusion that they have marked talent in that direction, that We have in mind just now the one girl in a thousand who has the ‘“‘real thing” genuine talent—*all wool and a yard wide,” and we have also in mind one of those deluded ones who are chasing the ignus fatuus of the counterfeit. 'he former is a sweetly pretty girl, who, when she addresses an audience, does so in such a sweet and unaffected manner THE SUNDAY that one's sympathies go out to her at once, and she has only spoken a few words when the audience is em rapport with her. It is not so much what she says, as how she says it. For instance, if she is going to say: “Waiter, bring me a sandwich,” ) it, ‘and does not vell like a raving maniac, supplicating some unseen demon and fairly tearing her hair out by the roots in her frenzy. No! she says CALL, the girl with the genuine article makes ner request in such a natural and winning that the people are moved, and feel en masse.to grant her request, If she says “This is Kkilling me,”” her tone is so genuinely full of sorrow that it needs no tearing of hair and facial gym- nastics to prove it to them. They believe it, and genuine tears are streaming from their eyes; for she made it real, and did not weaken the effect by agawing atten- tion to the fact that the diamond in the ring on the middle finger of her left hand is not a genuine one, and that when she way like goin leans forward her waist twists in a way which shows that her dressmaker also is an amateur, and is not up to date in her manner of clgghing “the human form divine.” When girl No. 1 says anything funny it seems to have sprung spontaneously from the impulsive humor of a girl's fresh heart, and does not seem at all second hand. You are not painfully impressed with the fact that this is the place to laugh, and you must do it if it chokes you to death, because the watchful eyes of the girl's mother are fixed upon you and she knows that this is .ae proper place to saugh, so you can't decelve her (2] (2] ——————————————————— for one moment. 8he is such a dear friend of yours, and it takes so little to please her, so, wuile you watch her eager face and =ee her lips moving in unigon with every word her daughter is saving you take the cue, and gulded by the mother's face you laugh at the prop- er moment, or rather, you do not laugh, but go through a process which is a cross between a hiccough and a yell, and for which you loathe yourself ever after, and g0 the day is saved, and the mother is still your friend. Girl No. 1 might say exactly the same thing and you could not restrain yourseif —you would roar, you would fairly howl, wunue your sides would ache and the tears would roll down your cheeas and you wouid applaud and try to bring her back until your hands weré fairly blistered, and yet—yeu had heard girl No. 2 recite that self-same thing and you had no in- clination to laugh. When girl No. 1 has said, “I am not mad, but soon will be”” your very heart went out to the poor creature and you believed it was really true, and you cried * until you were ashamed of yourself and made furtive dabs at your nose and thought of the time wasted in putting cold cream and powder on the aforesaid organ in order to look nice. What did it matter whether yvou looked nice or not? Looked nice, indeed! and that poor, sweet thing there before you, actually going mad—MAD! Oh, it was horrible! Your very soul was convulsed with agony. She g0 young and beautiful, too, and yet—her unaffected tone had carried such convic- tion with it that believe it you must, A few weeks later you happened to be at a ‘“‘missionary tea'” where the other yvoung female with elocutionary impedi- ments was to shine forth. After the heathen had been fully dis- cussed, and 11 cents had been collected for the support of ‘‘little Rose,”” a heath- en in a heathen land, and sister N—- had read the ‘“minutes” (they seemed more like hours) and weak lemonade and sponge cake had been passed around, the “‘passer’’ jfalling all over herself in order te hurry by the good old *“sister’ who always took two pieces—after all these tkings: had been done and the heathen duly commiserated for not coming at once en masse to our country and get- ting hold of our one exclusive form of religion as fast as they could, then, in- deed, came THE moment of all the meet- ing. The heathen were “not in it” Sophronisby paced the boards. ‘‘There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lea” when Sophia, with majestic mien and stately pride, condescended to amble out and place herself in front of the portieres (portieres always looked tragic, she thought, there was always a chance of some one being concealed behind them with a- dagger, ‘‘don’t you know"). when Well, it chanced that No. 2 had made the same celection as the one #ith which No. 1 girl had con- verted you into a perfect Niobe, but even though you could plainly see her mother working her lips and searching vainly in the back breadth of her skirt for a handkerchief—even that did not move you from your stoical indifference. ‘When she frantically pulled the trump frem her sleeve and yelled in a voice which sounded like Finnegan in the pho- nograph, ‘I am not mad, but soon will be,” all sorts of ridiculous answers filled your mind, and you felt like saying, ‘“Bet your life, old girl,” and instead of putting your handkerchief up to mop the copious tears, you put it up to hide the idiotic grin which you felt was gradually spreading from ear to ear. It seems to you that you never were possessed of such an insane desire to laugh, and you know by watching the thermometrical expression of the mother's face that a laugh at this juncture would be ““‘the last straw.” Oh, girls, girls, GIRLS! if you are cher- ishing illusions to the. effect that you are embryo genius in the eclocutionary line, g0, 1 beg of you, and be phrenologized, or—or chloroformed, or anything, in fact, except to grow up retaining the illusion and inflicting it upon patient and well- meaning people, who might otherwise have been your friends. To all such girls T would give the ad- vice usually given to those about to marry Don't, JESSIE JULIET KNOX.