On Sporting Girls.

Otago Witness, Issue 2520, 2 July 1902, Page 74

On Sporting Girls.

A witty contribution to the April number of Pearson's Magazine is Mr B. (Fletcher Robinson's paper on "Sporting and Athletic Girls." "/Why," he asks, "does sport attract the modern girl? "Why does she walk with the guns and. run with the beagles? Why does she stalk stags and catch salmon? The answer is at the mercy of all men of observation. X is* the tailoi-made costume.

"You may take it from me that the bright and beautiful English girl will continue to plod through sun and rain, flushing coveys out of shot, heading foxes, scdring stags, and snapping her brothers' best trout rods just so long as fashion stands by the tailor-made ; abolish the tailor-made, and she will go back to Berlin wool and canaries.

"Mind, I have no quarrel with that costume. Let us give the tailors the credit they deserve — they do the same by vs — and say at once it is first-rate. It is a remaikable fact that while it takes nine lailors to make a man, if we are to believe the proverb, it requires only one of that trade to turn out a splendid leather-bound, Hams-tweed snoi t.«woman that we offer to murry almost immediately. "There is a wide gulf fixed between the sportswoman and the extremely athletic girl. I do not mean the girl who plays the game m the ordinary way of business, hut the strenuous young party who thiows herneif into it as if it were a bargain sale. Does she talk 'dress" and 'servants' like a respectable young female? Not she. Does the airav herself in costumes designed to destroy the peace of mind of the mere man? Not "ii your life. Her conversation consiatg of yesterday's golf score or to-morrow's hockey match or the scandalous way they have handicapped her in the tennis tournament, winch things, taken in 1-uge doses, are most debilitating. "She ha« a good heart and no structural defects ; but if her clothes were le^s diffuse and intermittent in their manner of fining we should love her so much more, i'kej E&av_ b§ mosjfc CWttfcrtable* qhLy the

component parts do not seem to realise the value of pulling together. And so it comes about that the hand which drives the longest golf ball rarely wears the -wedding ring."