The Summer Girl

( Originally Published 1892 )

The Summer girl par excellence is, like the poet, born, not made.

The belles of the Winter salon, and the ball-room beauty, quite frequently prove ignominious failures as the Summer girl; while one less beautiful and with less style carries her world by storm.

Unless nature has bestowed certain peculiar qualities, the most charming and accomplished maiden will not succeed in the role of Summer girl. The matter of hair and complexion are vital points in her career.

The pink and white beauty who has attracted all eyes at theater and reception with her lovely tints, seldom succeeds as a Summer girl, because she burns to a lobster red each time she takes an outing.

The girl who tans a rich brown is well prepared for a Summer campaign. Tan, when evenly distributed, is not considered unbecoming by the majority of men, and even a few freckles scattered about the eyes and across the bridge of the nose are in the outing season thought • piquant and pretty.

But the girl whose face becomes a turkey's egg, with yellow back ground, and black polka-dots, and the girl whose nose burns and scales in the sun, may as well retire from the contest at once.

If she is a sturdy sailor and a skilled tennis-player, the men will consider her a jolly good comrade, but they will not make love to her.

And this is what the Summer girl desires, however much she may deny it.

Let her realize that her red nose stands between her and romance, and devote her Summer to the pursuit of good health, and put aside all thoughts of sentiment until the Winter time. Then, with her face bleached out into its natural pink and white tints, clothed in a pretty gown and posing on a divan before a glowing grate, her hour will come to conquer.

At ball and theater party, she can reign as queen of hearts, but the sceptre of the Summer girl is not for her.

Pretty feet, and well turned ankles, are a necessity to the Summer girl. It is only the wall flowers and chaperons who notice the dancers' feet in a Winter ball-room, and many a reigning belle succeeds in hiding her unbeautiful feet from view in parlor and promenade by adroit dressing and posing. But the Summer girl cannot conceal her feet or ankles, for she must sit in hammocks, step into boats, and perhaps expose herself in bathing costumes. Attractive feet are therefore an immense advantage, if not an absolute necessity, to her career.

Naturally curling hair goes a long way towards making the Summer girl a success, whether blonde or brunette. The girl who can emerge from the ocean bath or return from a hot promenade with her hair kinking and curling about her brow and neck owes a large debt to nature. But even if her hair does not curl, she can be thankful and hopeful if her ear-locks do not straggle in a limp and soggy way.

Damp, straight masses of thick hair clustered about the brow often give a pretty face a newer charm than carefully arranged frizzes; but the girl who is afflicted with scolding locks which refuse to grow beyond a certain undesirable length, and which lose their curl at the first breath of humidity, that girl need never hope to reign a Summer queen.

No sentiment could survive the sight of those unmanageable locks, lapping over a dress collar or spreading over eyes and ears.

Let her keep herself in the background until cool weather aids her in frizzing her usually fine and silken hair into a pretty fluff again, and then let her enter the field with the best of them.

The girl who feels languid and lifeless the moment the mercury mounts above the eighties, should not aspire to be a Summer girl. Physical endurance and the ability to be entertaining and amusing in the dog days, as well as picturesque, are imperative qualities for this role.

To sum it all up, then, the girl who blossoms out like a sunflower in hot weather; who has hair and complexion that are not demoralized by heat ; who terminates in neat feet and who is upholstered in fetching costumes, that girl is a successful summer girl, even if she goes no further than the veranda act and sits all day long under her red parasol, displaying pretty boots and hosiery and pretending to read.

Men will leave the dancing girl with the limp, rolling locks, and the tennis girl with the fish-scaled nose, to lean over the veranda girl's chair and talk sweet nothings and keep other men away.

Add to these qualities, however, positive prettiness and the accomplishments of rowing,swimming, riding and tennis, and you have the perfection of the Summer girl—fitted for any sport, equipped for any conquest—and who—seeing her with nature for a background, can resist her?

Not the college graduate, who likes an athletic girl; not the sentimental youth, who likes to sit with a pretty girl in the moonlight; not the blase young man, who likes to be amused, for she is equipped to please them all. The world is hers for two or three happy months. She is queen and empress of her domain till the leaves begin to fall, and the days begin to shorten.