THE AMERICAN ATHLETIC GIRL.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 128, 26 November 1904, Page 13

THE AMERICAN ATHLETIC GIRL.

Tata about the English girl's staying power; it cannot outrival the American tennis girl's. She plays a game wliich is harder than the average man's, There- is not a technicality she does not' understand. She smashes her service in a way that makes one smile when one recollect* the gentle, slow balls it used to be considered chivalrous for Adorns to drop before the weaker sex. She bewails her lack of judgment, as though it were a serious moral dereliction if she takes a ball that her critics decide would otherwise have gone out. She plays in a costume appropriate to her view of the game. She is either hatless — under that sun — or if her own is not handy she borrows any hatgear from an acquaintance, masculine or feminine, which will crush down over her brow. Should her blouse be decorated with a collar, she takes it off on the court before she commences to play; if the said garment has not short sleeves to begin with, she rolls them up to make them so. She wears laced, spiked shoes, and she lifts her foot to have the mud scraped from the spaces left on the sole, as much as a matter of course as she drinks iced water /between the games. Her petticoats, too, are somewhat shorter than a kilt, and as she plays with much energy and a nonchalance with regard to appearances, one wonders if she would not have been rather better for a divided skirt. But through everything, whether it be victory or defeat, at the beginning of the day or at the end, she is smiling, good tempered, remarkably fair. She can oven sec good points in the girls from other clubs ; the gibe about the feminine inclination to cheapen will not hold good with her. She has a sportsman's admiration for stamina, coupled with some of his optimism with regard to luck. "Well, maybe it will be my turn when I meet you next week at the Springs," was the answer of the vanquished after a hard fought set of singles, as the two shook hands in the proper masculine fashion. — Marion Bower, in The Cornhill Magazine.