Booth Tarkington

“ IT may have been that this comparison, so frankly unbowdlerized, helped to inspire Miss Daisy Mears. More probably what moved her was merely a continuation of the impulse propelling her from the moment of her first fall to the floor upon being accidentally bumped by Laurence. Surprisingly enough, in view of her present elations, Daisy had always been thought a quiet and unobtrusive little girl; indeed, she had always believed herself to be that sort of little girl. ”

“ Laurence returned, and added distinctly: “I rather die.”
“But I thought you wanted to play with little Daisy,” Mrs. Coy explained in her surprise. “I thought—”
“I rather die,” said Laurence, speaking so that everybody might hear him. “I rather die a hundred times.” And that no one at all might mistake his meaning, he concluded: “I'd rather eat a million boxes of rat-poison than play with her.”
So firm and loud a declaration of preference, especially in the unpreferred person's presence, caused a slight embarrassment to Mrs. Coy. “But Laurence, dear,” she began, “you mustn't—”
“I would!” ”

“ Laurence looked at her. When a grown person looks at another in that way, it is time for the police; and Mrs. Coy was conscious of an emergency. She took Laurence by the shoulders, faced him about and told him to run and play with some one else: then she turned back to Daisy. “We'll find some nice little boy—” she began. But Daisy had followed Laurence. ”

“ Falls were many and uproarious; annoyed little girls were upset; furniture also fell; the noise became glorious; and thus Laurence Coy's party was a riot almost from the start.
NOW, when boys at a party get this mob mood going, the state of mind of the little girls is warrantably that of grown ladies among drunken men. There is this difference, of course: that the adult ladies leave the place and go home as soon as they can extricate themselves, whereas the little girls are incapable of even imagining such a course of action ”

“ Don't you know you ought to appreciate what your mamma does for you—when she went to all the trouble to give you a nice party just to make you happy? Oughtn't you to do what she wants you to, to pay her for all that happiness? ”

“ Laurence had the brooding air of a person who has been dangerously trifled with; but he took his seat in an orderly manner, and unfortunately did not observe which of his guests just afterward came to occupy the next chair. Elsie, exquisitely dainty, a lovely sight, was standing alone in the open space in the center of the room. ”

“ THE thoughts of a little girl are not the thoughts of a little boy. Some will say that a little girl's thoughts are the gentler; and this may be, for the boy roves more with his tribe and follows its hardier leaders; but during the eighth or ninth year, and sometimes a little earlier, there usually becomes evident the beginning of a more profound difference. The little girl has a greater self-consciousness than the boy has, but conceals hers better than he does his ”

“ Mothers, in particular, have their own definitions, which are so often different from those of their sons that no one will ever be able to compute the number of mothers who have informed sons, ranging in age from fourteen to sixty-two, that what those sons mistook for love, and insisted was love, was not love. ”

“ The result is that long feud between the sexes during the period running from the ages of seven and eight to fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, when reconciliation and reconstruction set in—often rapidly.
Of course the period varies with individuals; however, to deal with averages, a male of five will play with females of similar age almost as contentedly as with other males, but when he has reached eight, though he may still at times “play with girls,” he feels a guilt, or at least a weakness, in doing so; for within him the long hatred has begun to smolder. ”

“ Thus it comes about that sweet love itself will often be found the hidden cause of tumults that break up children's parties.
The moment of Elsie's arrival at Laurence's party could have determined by an understanding person even if Elsie had been invisible to that person. Until then Laurence was decorous, greeting his arriving guests with a little arrogance natural to the occasion, since this was his own party and on his own premises ”

“ Many a parent and many an aunt will maintain that the girls are passive, that it is the boys who keep the quarrel alive, though this is merely to deny the relation between cause and result, and the truth is that the boys are only the noisier and franker in the exchange of reciprocal provocations. ”

“ She was the most commonplace of little girls; yet it has never been proved that commonplace people are content with their condition Finding herself upon the floor and kicking, this afternoon, Daisy Mears discovered, for the first time in her life, that she occupied a prominent position and was being talked about. ”

“ And since adults are but experienced children, we find illumination upon such a point in examples of the feud's revival in middle age; for it is indeed sometimes revived, even under conditions of matrimony. ”