That was before the day of high-school athletics. Girls who had to walk
more than half a mile to school were pitied. There was not a tennis-court
in the town; physical exercise was thought rather inelegant for the
daughters of well-to-do families. Some of the high-school girls were jolly
and pretty, but they stayed indoors in winter because of the cold, and in
summer because of the heat. When one danced with them, their bodies never
moved inside their clothes; their muscles seemed to ask but one thing--not
to be disturbed. I remember those girls merely as faces in the schoolroom,
gay and rosy, or listless and dull, cut off below the shoulders, like
cherubs, by the ink-smeared tops of the high desks that were surely put
there to make us round-shouldered and hollow-chested.
The daughters of Black Hawk merchants had a confident, unenquiring belief
that they were `refined,' and that the country girls, who `worked out,'
were not. The American farmers in our county were quite as hard-pressed as
their neighbours from other countries. All alike had come to Nebraska with
little capital and no knowledge of the soil they must subdue. All had
borrowed money on their land. But no matter in what straits the
Pennsylvanian or Virginian found himself, he would not let his daughters go
out into service.
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