Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1891-03-26
"THE SUMMER GIRL"
An Eloquent Apostrophe of Her Many
Personal Charms.

For response to the second toast an
nounced by the New York World, 1.-The
Summer Girl" the toast-master called
upon the Hon. Judge Waxem." other
wise known as W. J. hampton, ''the Abou
Ben Adhem of Summer Girl Seekers, -
who, after quoting the tosat, as follows pro-
ceeded to speak thereon with his accustom-
ed felicity:
The Summer Girl, born of the south
wind and the June sun, she fits, dainty,
rosy, dimpled apparition, clad in gowns
that disclose and yet conceal her myriad
charms, across the leaf-embowered stage
of summer. Hayward and capricious as
are the fre6ies of summer night, she
beckons and we follow. Rare product of
the summer season, she stands alone among
her sex. A mermaid at Narragansett, a
driad at Richield and nymph at White
Sulphur, she changes her mood and tense
to suit the woods or sea. All hail, the
Summer Girl! We fear and we low h,r,
How like rare mosaic portrait this.
How true the tints and shades that touch
this fairesI being of the world; this SYM
pheny in bingham. when the sun doth
stand atop the hills; this harmony in
cloudfLl. misty tulle, when night comes
on and hangs her lantern in the sky! All
hail; the summer girl, the flaffy flower
of June, the sweet rosebud of all the year,
the season charm, the dear ideal of day
that, when the winter twilight falls, fades
into darkness and is gone. Ephemeral
sweetness, born to live so short time, it
it needs must be that In this little span a
world of loneliness must be enclosed else
would there be no summer girl. She is
the child of bird songs and of flowers; a
gay and gladstone sperite that floats upon
wave of plaits and furbelows, of tucks
and fiounces, of parasols and fans, and
with blue eyed smile, a kiss high-tilted on
her ingertips, a nod as if sunbeam
bent TO touch a rose, CHEEKY word, a
laugh, contagious as are Cupid's pains, a
whispered sigh, an evelid dropping to the
tone of tender swain and takes the sun
light with her when she goes.
The painter paints the summer girl,
and curses colors that cannot copy hers;
the poet writes her lines, and breaks his
pen because it falls so short of her; the
lover lisps his sweetest words, and feels
they are but grains Of sand cast upward
at the stars, and still she moves serenely
on the sweet sublimity of guileless grace
the summer girl. 1--WE fear her. and
we love her, too, but with a love WI ich
is that perfect love that casts out fear
Her gentle eyes were never made to gaze
on aught less lovely than the sight she sees
in her own looking glass, and when she
looks on US there is that Wild enraptured
Joy within our hearts that blind men feel
when vision is again enthroned, and Gods
own sunshine once again falls frucitify
ing in the dead soil of the soul.
On silver sands her footprints fall; in
emerald waves her white skin CLEANS; by
babbIing brook her voice is,heard from
mountain heights her skirts, 10y swinging
breezes tossed, wave signals to the rising
sun; across the far off plains she whiris
from sea to sea; upon the oceans lazy
swells she skins, a bird of passage in her
fiight-here, there and everywhere we see
this goddess of the glory land, this in
SEPARATION of dream, and with shut eyes
and tremblying hand we lift our glass and
drink to her-the summer girl