The Richmond Virginian. (Richmond, Va.) 1910-1920, 1910-09-16
4 RAS COLLAR.

bloodless folk, easily chilled. They are as arti-
fetal as the rules by which they are bound.
Their sympathies are dried up, their pleasures
held in with the iron hoops of CUSTOM their very
existence spelled out by rote. Such people exist
in hobble skirts. They wear the iron collar of
usage. They are of the mass, instead of being.
as they fondly imagine, distinguished from it.
They do not know the feeling of red blood. They
do not know how to laugh or cry, or whoop. Lay
figures of existence, they simper lonesome way
through life, marionettes even when the exhi-
hltion of something real and purposeful shocks
them into the counterfeit of resentment
But Just there are so many conventions,
just the slaves of form are in one form or an
other under the yoke, there lives in each and all
a hidden hatred of the thing to which they bow.
Let big, husky personality break the letters
and he gets the real applause, if he win the lip
denunciation, of those most abiect and long suf-
fering. And to one who in great moment of
independence declares for personal liberty Of
action, there is the reward of such sweetness
as that which CLOSES the commission of crime
In such cases the pigmy heart swells to great
ness, the corsetted soul takes new growth
Come back as they may to hralldom after such
revolt the memory of the debauch fingers long,
1oldlY nuLufed ike secret shame.
We are led on to raise cheer along these lines
by an array of sound prose in metrical meas
ure recently appearing in the Lvnchburg News
from the pen of Marion Banister descrip-
! tive of the City Girl and the Country Dance.
Doubtless the hop and the skip, the bounce and
| the pigeon-wing reverse of the music are in more
or less degree devised to express in words the
similitude of tho subject, But however that
may be, Miss Banister goes to the point-uncon-
ventionally, unhindered unconfned. The rafters
shake, and the city girl sits apart for while with
tiptilted nose, till at length the rustic swain de-
livers her. Once in the whirl, with the fiddle
riotously agog, with the floor shaking. the city
girl loses her city gloss. She comes down to
Earth, only to leave it again with gladstone
bound To quote the last two verses:
The lamps flare hgh--who cares if
they smoke.
At everything that happens, they Just
laugh and joke.
The heat grows intense-she hears her
partners loud boiler,
Excuse me, please miss'-and then
He Takes Off His Collar.
The City Girl laughs aloud her eyes
dance with glee;
eyes, that will be nicer and cooler
| says she.
Then she thinks to herself really now
what's the harm
In taking off ones collar, if one gets
too warm
| What, pray, could be either more natural than
the act more true than the new spirit born in
that dollhouse breast, in which it was received :
If one is warm, really, now, what Is the harm Z
We will wager something that this poem is not
much the work of genius as it is of one who is
genius in description We venture the ex-
perience got into the News straight from the
bat of life. There is verify about it that brings
the comforting thought that one city girl has
learned some sense.
Of all conventions, the collar is the most rigid,
the most irksome, the most compelling. Yet
not few brave souls here and there rise ND and
give it the go-by, sbaming at one and the same
time the world, the flesh and the devil Fear
full as we all are to do what we would like with
the collar, it will be noted that the occasional
independent gains sympathy and applause
even as the rustic swain of the poem-rather
than contumely and contempt. When the collar
offends, pluck it of. Also the cuffs Ditto neck
tie. Bring forth the handkerchief and let her
swobl Wiring her out and 60 ahead On with
the dance--let JOY be unconfned, neckly or
otherwisei
Messrs. Barnes and Woodruff evidently have
nnton that certain dist;nn,;ebed NO rr;or ,r;ll