The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1896-03-15
IN A GIRLS BOHEMIA
UNCONVENTIONAL LIFE AMoNG BOs-
TON ART AND MUSIC STUDENTS.
Young Women with Much Ambition
FamOus-Their Trials and joys

There Is not a city in the United States
so full of young girls away from home as
Boston Is. They flock here from all parts of
the country. each with her own particular
hobby. With one it is the ambition of her
life to study for the stage. With another
1t is elocution or reading, as it is now Gated.
She has won the prize at several ''Demorest
contests" in her own county,. she has re-
cited at ali public entertainments in her ma
tive village, and been praised by friends and
the local press.
She feels assured that with a few months
at a Boston college of oratory or elocution
she will be a second Nella Brown Pond.
Her friends and relations invariably show
this feeling with her, and the consequence
is that she Is rather surprised to find that
there are two or three hundred other girls
in the school who recite just as well as
she does.
Young women come from all parts Of the
country to study instrumental and vocal
music. The great number com from coun-
try towns and villages. They have taken
lessons of the accomplished lady who plays
the organ Sundays and teaches the rest of
the week. They can play the BLACK Hawk
waltz without a break. and the manner in
"NN~A my AOCaAC ShoN OOLIPOSAlAOn hlONA
as the blue Danube and Variations" is
the wonder and admiration of the neighbor-
hood.
When they arrive in Boston some blunt
old German puts them on scales, and they
also learn that there are seven hundred
other girls who can play the BLACK Hawk
waltz and the Beautiful Blue Danube"
The girl who has twittered Spring, Spring,
Gentle Spring." with II Dreamt 1 Dwelt in
Marble Halls for an encore. since she was
in the primary school,, finds that she. too,
must sing scales in Boston, and is treated
just as though she were a beginner.
1t is ridiculous. of course, when she stops
known to every person within a radius of six
miles at home. In Boston nobody ever al
ludes to her as the second Patti. and some
way her voice does not create much of a flu
rore in dramatic circles. She thinks the
damp climate has injured its qualities.
The aesthetic young lady from Allentown.
self finally In misty far-off Boston. She
wonders how long it will take the teachers
and the other art scholars in the art school
TO recognize her genius.
She paints lovely snow scenes with dia-
mond dust on the trees and housetops.
Her pansy PLAQUES have been much COW
nizes the crayon she did of her mother. A
few may have said they knew the breast
pin; but they were envious souls and only
AT the art school they set her to drawing
straight lines for weeks. After a month or
two she puts the snow scenes and the pansy
PLAGUE in the bottom of her trunk.
The girl who comes here to study for the
stage has the thorniest road of all to travel.
If she has sense enough to know in the be-
ginning that schools of oratory. will never
help her on the stage, she will save her
self two or three wasted years.
There are very few among these girls.
these readers, vocalists. Observation-Disclosures.
artists and actresses, that have not come
from comfortable. quiet, conventional homes.
rious schools; they pay anywher from S
to $3.50 a week for their board, a few not so
much as S.. The rest of their monthly al
lowance, not a large sum in the beginning.
they have to spend as they like.
For the first time in their lives they are
away from their parents. without restraint
and caution that come in the letters from
home.
BOARDING. HOUSES ARE DRFyARY.
The big city bewilders them at first. So
many strangers on every side makes them
reticent and Ill at ease. The five-dollar and
six-dollar boarding houses are dreary. The
people in them, unless they, too, are stu
dents. are dreary. shabby genteel individuals,
with the stamp of the boarding house upon
them as plainly as are initial letters on the
left flank of a Texas steers.
The girl student cannot work continually
for a week or two, and she wishes a good
many times, as she sits looking disconso-
lately around at the bare walls and the
home.
Gradually, during the funeral meals. she
gets acquainted a little. and meets some
as herself. They exchange visits in each
others room; they. go somewhere. sight
Circle e of ac%aaai ana Ssc0 Increases is,es' By der der
grees. She begins to know her way about.
and it isn't so bad;
cent Bohemia or a Bohemia that is not so
INNOCENT depends upon herself
Many of them never see that life at all;
they. have inherited the narrow views and
opinions of a country village from their
grandmothers and Observation-Disclosures. This
stay in ,so Boston ito ~, without mos the ,u parental nta eye
their history. And they will return to take
up their life just where they left it of.
But the vivacious girl with an affable dis
position soon brings about herself a circle
of friends, and then dullness and monotony
vanish. They like the theater; they want
have only read about. They have no money
TO pay $50 for orchestra stalls, so they
go in a body Saturday afternoons and buy
twenty-five-cent seats in the family circle"
as it is ironically named. They feel that it
is such an extraordinary and unconventional
spirits. They eat caramels and butter scotch:
they giggle to their hearts content. and
have the best time imaginable.
Mrs. Jack Gardner. they do not know her.
even by sight, but il is a pleasurable excite
ment deciding which one of the women in
the expensive seats she ought to be.
When Melba comes, and is at the Grand
Opera. they are there. They may be so far
up that they are only visible through a tele-
If YOU wager that they are there. The
opera is long. and they go home shockingly
late, and which is very delightful. When
Sunday comes they stay home just for the
novelty of it,
The writer knew a girl who used to seem
TO extract the most exquisite pleasure Sun
day from sitting up in bed grinning from
ear to ear and listening to the church bells
ring.
The wickedness Of ~absenting herself from
church seemed to delight her beyond words.
through curiosity; others because they pre-
fer to, but the majority never set their feet
inside of one.
JOINT HOUSEKEEPING.
After they have been in the city awhile
and become well acquainted. five or six
sometimes settle in the same household,
then. partly for economy's sake. and partly
because their stomachs rebel against the
cheap and abominable food that appears
upon the $50 O week table, they get per-
mission from the landlady to cook in their
own rooms.
They get a kerosene stove or an arrange
ment for the gas fixtures, and on this they
make coffee and chocolate, boil eggs. cook
oyster stews and ali sorts Of things in the
same dish. They laugh and jest over these
nozu meals They share each Others am