So run certain familiar advertisements. They are cited here as containing the descriptive words which have a particular applicability to the athletic girl, who, to state the general case in regard to her, is tall, good-looking, steady; neat, respectable, with no fringe; good, plain. [Illustration: The athletic girl] This fact notwithstanding, the average athletic girl would not make a successful groom; still less would she give satisfaction as a housemaid; and least of all has she in her the makings of a good cook. Some hold that she has in her the makings of a good pianist, but that is a mistake, for she has no _adagio_. “I call a girl like that a fortist, not a pianist,” was said of her the other day. Not always, but very often, the athletic girl’s is the prosaic type of mind, concerning which Lowell writes— “The danger of the prosaic type of mind lies in the stolid sense of superiority which blinds it to everything ideal, to the use of everything that does not serve the practical purposes of life. Do we not remember how the all-observing and all-fathoming Shakespeare has typified this in Bottom the Weaver? Surrounded by all the fairy creations of fancy, he sends one to fetch him the bag of a humble-bee, and can find no better employment for Mustard-seed than to help Cavalero Cobweb scratch his ass’s head between the ears. When Titania, queen of that fair, ideal world, offers him a feast of beauty, he says he has a good stomach to a pottle of hay!” The athletic girl easily thus runs to prose. Sometimes her prose is very funny. She looked up lately from a novel with the speech— “There’s one thing I do want to know most awfully, Daddy—how people ‘gnash’ their teeth. Is it anything like this—or this—or this?” Each question was accompanied by a facial illustration. Daddy is a serious man, but he laughed heartily. Sometimes, however, Daddy shakes his head. The following is a case in point. “Do you know, my dear,” he asked, “the difference between a soprano and a contralto?” “Why, of course, Dad,” was the answer. “The one’s a squeak and the other’s a squawk.” [Illustration] Such a girl has some knowledge, but she lacks some grace. Very often the athletic girl lacks both knowledge and grace. Sometimes, too, she lacks brains. The outward marks by which you shall know her in that case are that she has large ears and a little forehead. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are not many. Of accomplishments the average athletic girl has few. All the French she knows she puts into a smile, and that smile is the one with which she meets any references to customs of the good old time. It says— _Nous avons changé tout cela._ [Illustration: Her ancestress]