Girls' club

“ Interesting, amusing, and natural stories of a girls club.
"Will captivate as many adults as if it were written for them. . . . The secret of Mrs. Rankin's charm is her naturalness . . . real girls . . . not young ladies with pigtails, but girls of sixteen who are not twenty-five ... ”

“ The Girls' Club of Upper Montclair, New Jersey, was started several years ago as a department of the Woman's Club. Its membership includes [Pg 225] girls in the grade below the high school and the girls who have left school and have not gone to college or into business. The attendance has grown so that one winter there was only one meeting when the number did not reach a hundred. ”

“ In New York, in 1879, was founded a Girls’ Club, which consisted of the founder, a woman of education and wealth, and ten or twelve factory and shop girls, who met in an upper room in a Tenth Avenue tenement house. During the past ten years, that club has increased to a membership of several hundred, and twenty-two kindred clubs have been formed in New York, eleven in Brooklyn, and eight in Boston and in other cities. These clubs are mainly self-supporting, and their work is the education and elevation of the members in every possible 340direction—physical, industrial, mental, and moral. ”

“ Tennis, basket ball, cricket, hockey and croquet are played by groups of girls who often challenge boys' clubs and are able to enter such contests with skill and ability. The gardening club is one of the many ways in which a club of girls can raise money to help in benevolent and other objects.
To form a group of this kind successfully the girl members require to have kindly impulses and enthusiasm, a willingness to work and play together, and the wish to be useful and to do something worth doing. ”

“ Only a fleeting glimpse of the ideal, and soon the club room is again a clamorous, gay, turbulent place. There is much energy that must be let off; nothing but dancing will satisfy the demand. This means that the doors must be opened to “the fellows” too. They, meantime, have been besieging the club from the outside. If the older girl is to be held, some concession must be made to her chief desire. Once it is made, many difficulties arise. The interest between the girls and 69 boys here is almost wholly one of sex. They are farther apart than in other circles. ”

“ Meanwhile, it behoves private people who care about these things to do what they can. If they rightly influence but ten girls, it was well worth doing. The girls' club is a very inexpensive mode of social activity. Practically the only substantial item of expenditure is the hire of a gymnasium, say for two evenings in a week. The girls' dresses can be made at home at quite a trivial cost. The primary attraction would be the gymnasium. ”

“ No girl enjoys leaving the party at ten when "the other girls" stay until twelve. Nor does she enjoy declining invitations when the other girls all go. But what the individual mother finds difficult, community sentiment can easily accomplish. The woman's club or the mothers' club or the parent-teacher association, or better yet all three, may profitably discuss the question, and may set about the creation of the sentiment required. ”

“ But, if a young woman, of fair mental capacity, breaks through the trammels of propriety, rides the saddle astride, climbs fences and trees, joins a base-ball club, or acquires distinction in any roystering game which demands pluck and endurance, you may expect something; she possesses the elements of a strong womanhood. I would prefer one such woman, either in the hospitals at Gettysburg, or at the head of a family of children, to a dozen women who were chiefly distinguished in girlhood for immaculate collars and bows. ”

“ Needlework, especially, they dislike; they dance, sing, have musical drill, and read a little. Five ladies who work for the church and for the club live in the club-house, and other ladies come to lend assistance. When we consider what the homes and the companions of these girls are, what kind of men will be their husbands, and that they are to become mothers of the next generation, it seems as if one could not possibly attempt a more useful achievement than their civilization. Above all, this club stands in the way of the greatest curse of East London—the boy and girl marriage. ”

“ Allison's plan, as she outlined it to Betty, Lloyd, and Kitty at recess, in one of the swings, was to form a club that should be not only fun for themselves, but of some real benefit to the girls of the mountain districts. ”

“ For a long time Jerry and I have had the idea of forming a club. We talked of it last year, after Christmas, and again after we gave the operetta. But you know what a hard year we had over basketball, and then so many of us became sick that somehow the club idea was 41 put away and forgotten. But now, as Jerry says, ‘the time has come.’ What we’d like to do is to form a club from a certain number of girls in the senior class. It mustn’t be just a social affair but one devoted to the purpose of looking out for anyone that needs our help. ”

“ It is due to this fact that girls’ clubs succeed best in the business part of a town, where “working girls" and “young ladies" meet upon an equal footing, and where the clothes superficially look very much alike. ”

“ This note sounds in the unusually frank answer of one who did not speak for herself but said that she really thought some of the other girls went away to the city because there was no one in the village for them to marry, and in the naïve words of the girl who stated that she always said a club was a very good thing. Where the community does not afford the social life they crave as a part of their development, as the natural normal state for their self-expression, and as a part of their plans for life, it is no wonder they seek it elsewhere. ”

“ We’re going in for athletics and the ‘simple life’ strongly; aren’t we, girls?”
Her fellow club members agreed in a hearty chorus. “Besides,” added Bess, “we can have all the fun the other kind of girls have as well as our own kind. ”

“ We'd hardly got into the room this mawning when some of the girls began to laugh and repeat every word we had said."
"It's all over the school about our Shadow Club," chimed in Betty, "and think how hard we tried to keep it secret! And the very girls who would have been glad to join, if they had been invited in the first place, are making fun of it. They keep pointing to the ground behind us, and pretend to be amazed at what they see there. ”

“ Bright and ambitious girls will come to these down-town clubs to eat lunch and rest at noon, to study all sorts of subjects and listen to lectures, when they might hesitate a long time about joining a club identified with their own neighborhood, where they would be judged not solely on their personal merits and the unconscious social standing afforded to good clothes, but by other surroundings which are not nearly up to these. ”

“ The modern sewing-circle, the missionary associations, even the temperance organizations in churches, have frequently been most efficient means of holding churches together. Clubs for boys are not so strongly recommended as for girls, because these associations for young men come to be their dependence for entertainment, and consume the hours which ought to be spent at home, or in the society of both girls and boys. Club-life in England, particularly London, has taken the place of home-life. ”

“ I was thinking, girlies, that as long as there are so many elderly and old people in the village, some of whom are poor and some who are partial invalids, that it would be a very sweet thing if you little girls could form yourselves into a club which would help to make their lives a little less sad. ”

“ Every one who has had to do with down-town girls' clubs has had the experience of going into the home of some bright, well-dressed girl, to discover it uncomfortable and perhaps wretched, and to find the girl afterward carefully avoiding her, although the working girl may not have been at home when the call was made, and the visitor may have carried herself with the utmost courtesy throughout. ”

“ Many other women had felt the same burdens too heavy to be borne, but had seen no escape. She suggested a club-house for ladies in some central part of the city which they all often passed in shopping. It should be a comfortable resting-place, with restaurant, reading-room, etc. It should always be open, but one afternoon in the week should be considered a special reception day. That would give ladies a chance to see each other with very little trouble. ”

“ You ought to see them,” she went on, still appealing to Cahill. “They are so interested and amused in their ‘clubs,’ which meet different afternoons in the week, and they are so anxious to get in even before the others leave! I have seen them climbing up in the windows to get a look at the good times the others were having, and waiting about at the door in the cold until that ‘club’ should have gone home and left the warm rooms and the playthings, and the cheerful, bright teachers to them. ”

“ Cora insisted on the festivities breaking up on the scheduled time, and so did Clip. Cora wanted to get to the antique shop, and Clip wanted to get back to Chelton. So after a delay, impossible to avoid where there were so many boys and so many girls, each and all wanting something to say, some question to ask, or some message to deliver, the party finally started off on the return trip of the first regular tour of the Motor Girls' Club. ”

“ The ideal group is not made up of girls exclusively, but should take its pattern as much as possible from family life. The girls of the group play together and work together. But the fathers and mothers of some of the girls will be glad to be honorary members and should share at times both in work and in play. A boys' club may be a friendly rival in games and may co-operate in benevolent work and entertainment. ”

“ There are so many things a girl can do, even when society claims her,— more than ever, I should say! Make work, if you cannot get it, girls. Encourage poor girls by joining the industrial unions instituted in their behalf. Go into the hospitals, old ladies' homes, charity bureaus, flower missions. Join a Chautauqua club, or one of the societies for the encouragement of studies at home. That one founded in Boston for home studies, and which now numbers many hundreds, affords excellent instruction, particularly in literature and history. ”

“ For a club of girls to become involved in a mystery leading back into the times of the California gold-rush, seems unnatural until the reader sees how it happened, and how the girls helped one of their friends to come into her rightful name and inheritance, forms a fine story. ”

“ She has invited half a dozen young fellows to form a glee club and sing one evening a week in her parlor. They all have musical talent, and they are capable of appreciating her attractive manners, but they had not before thought of any better way of spending their evenings than in screaming about the streets. If a poor girl has a good voice, this young lady finds time to teach her to sing. ”

“ What of lack of recreation and social life? Does the low wage drive girls to immorality? What can be done locally to better conditions in our shops?
This all leads up to the enormous subject of women's work to-day. It is said that three hundred lines of work are open to them, and clubs should select what they prefer to study. Among the many books of reference to be found on these and similar topics are: "Woman and Labor," Olive Schreiner (F. A. Stokes Co.) ; "Women and Economics," Charlotte Perkins Stetson (Small, Maynard) ; "Women in Industry," Edith Abbott (D. Appleton & Co.) ”

“ He said why not have a phonograph, or even a stenographer, in the room while we are discussing a topic; then we could have copies made, and—”
“That reminds me,” said the president, and she rapped loudly for order. “Girls, do be quiet. We have a very important question to decide to-day. A number of men have expressed a desire to become members of this club, and—”
“I vote against it,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “We can all express our real opinions now, knowing they will go no further, whereas—”
“No club man can ever keep a secret,” broke in the girl with the dimple in her chin. ”

“ That’s the trouble with a crowd of girls. After they have played ‘Ring Around the Rosy’ and ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’ they don’t know another living thing to do except to sit down and look prim and be prosy. ”

“ Perchance the club may have needed a baby now that “Little Brother” had returned, to live in his own home, anyhow, Abbie, almost before any one was aware of it, was occupying this position. Before her arrival Sylvia Wharton had been the youngest member of the Sunrise club, but there had never been anything particularly youthful or clinging about Sylvia; indeed, she had been about the most independent and self-reliant of the girls and therefore she found it very difficult to understand her own special protégé. ”

“ Cricket next asked, picking up their visitor’s muff and pressing it close to her face with something like a caress. Then more softly, “I did not mean to be rude.”
Betty nodded. “Of course I’ll come if you wish me. You see, I am a stranger in Boston and lonely. But I’ll never have anything half so interesting to tell you as the history of our club with such girls as Polly O’Neill, Esther and Meg and the rest for heroines. Nothing in my whole life has ever been such fun. ”