Head girl

“ And while you and the rest of your kind are battling together—year after year—for this special privilege of being 'bored to death,' the 'real girl' that you're asking about, the marvelous girl, the girl with the big, beautiful, unspoken thoughts in her head, the girl with the big, brave, undone deeds in her heart, the girl that stories are made of, the girl whom you call 'improbable'—is moping off alone in some dark, cold corner—or sitting forlornly partnerless against the bleak wall of the ballroom—or hiding shyly up in the dressing-room—waiting to be discovered! ”

“ A mighty pretty girl, too—small head—you know how that makes a girl look taller and helps her figure; most women are built like dwarfs nowadays—deep brown eyes, a delicious mouth, and a touch of originality in her expression on account of a small scar on the left side of her chin. It's positively a beauty-spot, more like a dimple than a scar, and it crinkles up when she smiles. ”

“ How any one can think that a girl with a tangled braid hanging down her back, a little wad over one ear, a ragged, jagged fringe edging its way into her eyes and half a dozen little wisps standing out here and there in haystack fashion—how one can even fancy that such a head as that is pretty is more than I can explain. Clothes may make the man, but rational hairdressing goes a pretty long way toward making the woman. ”

“ I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘all right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” ”

“ And, on the other side of the scale, where we looked for a shrill head-voice or a tender musical cadence, we get that hoarse chest-voice with which young and pretty girls sometimes startle us. This voice is in fact one of the characteristics of the modern girl of a certain type; just as the habitual use of slang is characteristic of her, or that peculiar rounding of the elbows and turning out of the wrists—which gestures, like the chest-voice, instinctively belong to men only and have to be learned before they can be practised by women. ”

“ She is so beautifully made that there is great satisfaction in looking at her. (If she had all the virtues in the world I could never take any interest in a girl who had a large head, or short legs, or thick ankles!) ”

“ Let us have "sweet girl graduates" by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the "golden hair" will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within. ”

“ A girl may not only improve the appearance of her face and head by the proper use of line but she may do wonders with her figure, as well, if she knows how to properly design her dresses. A dress wonderfully becoming to a slender sylphlike girl may become a tragedy on her plump classmate. Every girl should understand her physical make-up as thoroughly as she does her disposition, with its strong points and its weaknesses. ”

“ There is nothing very pronounced about the feminine modes of aggression and retaliation; and yet each is eloquent and sufficient for its purpose. It 186 may be only a stare, a shrug, a toss of the head; but women can throw an intensity of disdain into the simplest gesture which answers the end perfectly. The unabashed serenity and unflinching constancy with which one woman can stare down another is in itself an art that requires a certain amount of natural genius, as well as careful cultivation. ”

“ It is a girl—clearly an appendage to the bath-tub, only her head and throat—beautiful girls have throats instead of necks—and a suggestion of shoulder appearing above the side. ”

“ And very obedient to me she was when a little child, before you took her in hand and spoiled her, by filling her head with a pack of court notions. Why—why—why—did I not overhear you telling her she must behave like a princess? You have made a Whig of the girl; ”

“ Every now and then she would pause in front of one of the great mirrors of the room, and look at the reflection of her tall thinness and the trailing satin of her gown.
"The girl--so pretty, in a gossamer sort of way," The words echoed in her mind, and vaguely, beside her own image in the glass, there rose a vision of girlhood--pale, gold hair, pink cheeks, white frock--and she turned away, miserable, from that conscious, that intellectual distinction with which, in general, she could persuade herself to be very fairly satisfied. ”

“ If in my hour of agony and shame I could implore the help of any human being, I would come to you—dear, honest, brave girl!—before all others, to fling myself at your feet, and kiss your hands, and beseech you to pity me and save me from myself, to hold my hot head on your gentle bosom, and your soothing hand on my fierce heart. ”

“ But for all the daring brightness of her glances, it was not a joyous face, such as one would wish a girl of seventeen to possess. A little cynical curve of the red mouth, a little contemptuous glance from those brown eyes, showed one that she took her measurements of individuals by a gauge of her own, and that she had not that guileless trust in human nature that is supposed to belong to young womanhood. ”

“ Moving about the large room softly, her harmonious strength and grace were revealed in the swing of her long lithe limbs, the reach of her satiny brown arms, the breadth of her sweet smooth breast, the straightness and firmness of her tall frame. Only a self-reliant girl could have moved as she moved, a girl made self-reliant by exuberant health and ideals and hope. ”

“ All sorts of girls—sturdy and slender girls; queer girls with lean, wiry bodies; deceptive girls with bodies curiously plastic under the appearance of fragility; here a young miracle of physical culture; there a girl with the pointed breasts and flying shoulders, the limbs, the hips, the questing face that recalled some fugitive soul of the woods and mountains ”

“ She wished to conform to her mother's exigent standard, but she could not, all at once, and be a girl too—a girl of sixteen, a little off the key physically, not having come to a woman's repose of movement; a little stridulous mentally, but pulsing with life's dumb music of aspiration; as intense as her mother in feeling, without her mother's power to throw off the strain in words. ”

“ Now she moves, and one shoulder is entirely visible—whiter, fairer than the spotless clothing of the bed on which she lies, is the smooth skin of that fair creature, just budding into womanhood, and in that transition state which presents to us all the charms of the girl—almost of the child, with the more matured beauty and gentleness of advancing years. ”

“ The face of the girl is bright, expressive, and, in a degree, pretty. Had she lived to womanhood she might have grown into what is called a fine woman. The features are large and regular, the eyes full of vivacity and good temper, the nose prominent and well shaped, the mouth pleasant, and indicative of resolution. Altogether the girl had a generous and loving kind of lookout, and not rare in the species at her budding and buoyant age. ”

“ It is precisely the same interest which attaches us to the loosely-tied bundle of virtues and accomplishments which we call a girl. We recognise in her our future ruler. The shy, modest creature who has no thought but a dance, and no will but mamma's, will in a few years be our master, changing our habits, moulding our tastes, bending our characters to her own. ”

“ Perhaps I'll make a lady's-maid of her, though it doesn't seem quite the right thing to do.”
“No, it doesn't. Don't go and spoil what you have done by any such folly as that.”
“Do you want me to make a lady of her—or what?”
“A lady? Well that is a difficult question to answer; but I have heard that sometimes ladies, like poets, are born, not made. At all events, it would not be right, I fancy, to keep the girl here. It might give rise to disagreeable complications, as you always have a parcel of fellows hanging about you.” ”

“ The shy, awkward, hard-featured girl was grown into a woman whose face made such declaration of intellect and character that, after the first moment, one became indifferent to its lack of feminine beauty. ”

“ The young ladies certainly bore some resemblance to the type of American girl which one never fails to meet in travelling. They were dressed in the height of the fashion, pretty with the delicate evanescent beauty of too many of our girls, and all gifted with the load voices, shrill laughter, and free-and-easy manners which so astonish decorous English matrons and maids. ”

“ The eyes too, so gentle, undisturbed, observant, are just a little, though illusively, unscrupulous. It is essentially the face of a young girl with all the delicate finenesses and sweet, reliant placidities of inexperience; but it is also a face already rich in power, reservations, and a silent deliberateness of conduct. ”

“ A tall, elegant girl of apparently only three or four-and-twenty, an imperious, regal, haughty girl, whose raven-black hair was braided over pale, regular features, and whose rich silk attire glistened and rustled as she walked. ”

“ A fair young girl, with a pure soft face, that owns a magnificent pair of eyes, big{13} and grey and black lashed, a little straight nose, and a mouth sweet to distraction. Her hat has fallen back, and her hair looks all afire with ruddy gleam as the bright moonlight touches it, and even through the long loose cloak the perfection of her tall, slender figure is visible. ”

“ While dreaming and chattering, making tiny outfits, and baby clothes, while sewing little gowns, and corsages and bodices, the child grows into a young girl, the young girl into a big girl, the big girl into a woman. ”

“ She was a sweet exception to the loud, womanish, conventional girl we meet everywhere—on the street, in places, of public amusement and in the drawing-room—a fragrant human flower with the bloom of gentle girlhood on every unfolding leaf. ”

“ When one observes carefully any large cosmopolitan group of young women, she sees some with hard faces, some marked by suffering, many marked by selfishness and fretfulness and many more showing dissatisfaction and unhappiness, and her mind goes back involuntarily to the fairy story with the mirror which showed "the girl you meant to be." The contrast between what many a girl meant to be and what she is, reveals a real tragedy. ”

“ I retain delightful recollections of the mid-Victorian girl. These maidens, in their airy clouds of white, pink, or green tulle, and their untouched faces, had a deliciously fresh, flower-like look which is wholly lacking in their sisters of to-day. A young girl's charm is her freshness, and if she persists in coating her face with powder and rouge that freshness vanishes, and one sees merely rows of vapid little doll-like faces, all absolutely alike, and all equally artificial and devoid of expression. ”

“ You're just a girl to me. You are a girl, yourself. I can't see you as anything but a girl!"
She made a little gesture with her long arms, lithe and elastic still as when she was a schoolgirl, only more rounding in modelling; she pressed a hand to her hair, still brown and thickly growing. She turned away the face that showed lines brought by years of worry, of concentration upon her work; ah, they were there even in the moonlight and even though she tended her skin as prettier women often neglect to do. ”

“ A girl, innocent still, too slender for perfect proportion—too wide in the lips and chin for perfect beauty—her dark tresses contrasting charmingly with her fair skin; too impulsive to hide her likes and dislikes, and inclined to weep when she was alone, though not before others. ”

“ Besides the little girl who brought up the rear, the herd was preceded by a boy of about fourteen, whose duty it was not to let the foremost, the more enterprising, or, in other words, the most empty pigs, advance too fast. In the middle of the drove, surrounded like a shepherd by his flock, slowly stalked the “Schwein-general,” a wan, spectre-looking old man, worn out, or nearly so, by the arduous and every-day duty of conducting, against their wills, a gang of exactly the most obstinate animals in creation. ”

“ Did you ever notice that men always instinctively put confidence in a girl with blue eyes, and have their suspicions of a girl with brilliant black ones, and will you kindly tell me why? Is it that the limpid blue eye, transparent and gentle, suggests all the soft, womanly virtues, and because he thinks he can see through it, clear down into that blue-eyed girl's soul, that she is the kind of girl he fancies she is? ”

“ What more natural, then, that the girl should draw, in her imagination, an ideal picture of her unknown defender? She represented him to herself as a tall, gloomy, pale-faced youth, who never smiled except when doing good, and his gentle look frequently followed her into her dreams. ”

“ The cast-off dresses, boots, pieces of finery, and many other things which would be her perquisites would be a little fortune to her, and greatly excited her cupidity. But there were other more important considerations: she would occupy a much higher position in the social scale, and dress well, her hands and skin would grow soft and white, and her appearance and conversation would be that of a lady; for to be a lady's-maid is, of course, the nearest thing to being a lady. ”

“ Here, the female principle exists, and as you predicted, most of the women are therefore entirely different from ours. The term used in this language is "femininity." It is a devastatingly attractive thing—but almost impossible to explain. I will make an attempt.
Senseless, reasonless, even foolish motions of the body and the hands, the expressions of the eyes and the mouth, the way the head is moved and tilted are a part of it. So are unusual tones of the voice and special ways in which things are said. ”