The Washington herald., 1921-07-03
debute asnA rid.

faculty OF going off with bang. She drives her
car SO hard that it is quickly to be found painting
IN repair shop. She dances her boys so end
lcssly that they thankful for 'he rest cure of
a gymnasium. She breaks speed limits and the
rules OF the road with as little compunction as
she alps her finger in the face OF conventions
She takes everything that she can get and gives
nothing IN return. She will rarely speak to any
man who l. on the shady side of Is, and only
then If all his brains in his feet Her motto
is, Nothing succeeds like the sex"
She has an exceedingly small, bot shsttrs-
Ingly concise vocabulary. Every hkeable thing 3
simply divine" Every untkesble thing is ~just
punk" Every child over is "Oh- God" An
responsible people, and other peoples parents
are "oumb-beTs."
She never reads, seldom writes, and never
takes outdoor exercise. She dresses for golf and
holds up the course at the second hole She
makes up for tennis, and smokes 100 cigarettes
on the court. She gets into bathing kit and
watches her best boy dive. If she gets wet
II is only because she has been pushed in. She
viii ride hobby-horse to staggers- But let
there be band, piano, Nictrols, or Jews
harp, and she will jazz until the cows come home
and all her partners are dead.
She has fundamental horror of tradition
and the day before yesterday and any person
event or substance other than alcohol that ante
dates her coming out is Palaeozoic-
The other day l went into the house of
charming lady whose debutante daughter had lust
come home from ball in Washington. She and
her friends had danced until the small hours,
and rather than be so dull as to 60 to bed, had
driven 10 New York through the remainder OF
the night. They arrived in time for lunch, laugh
ing, tired and in the almost Hawaiian costume OF
the evening-spoiling to be up and doing again.
Wise and well-drilled, the startled mother dared
not venture criticism, reproof or comment. She
ordered more places at her hitherto peaceful
table and sent the bewildered butler down TO the
swiftly ernptyng cellar for the usual happer tonic.
While waiting for this much needed flip the
daughter took into the drawing room tinyshin
thing with bobbed hair and permanently elevated
eyebrows, who looked like a cupie and spoke like
a widow, TO see portrait of her comparatively
young and still beautiful mother which had been
painted by Sterner two years before How do
you like the thing" she asked And after a brief
and casual inspection / heard this typical reply,
"Oh, yes quite good. Done in the costume Of
the period, i see"
All the same there is hy in the ointment
OF this triumphant young person, this little Miss
Trotsky. She is haunted by the certain and ter
rIble knowledge that she must make sensation
and become engaged TO be married IN her FIRST
year or be relegated to the hasbeens. The tragedy
OF her brief life IS that to the next batch OF
debutantes she will be regarded as dodo, di-
lapdated bird a last years hangover, to be in
cuded scornfully in their invitations as a wall
flower, hler-in, exactly IN the same way in
which she, newly broken from the shell, had
treated the debutantes OF yeSter-year. Poetic
Justice indeed, Thus, therefore is explained her
ferverish ambition TO acquire fame and nance
between the nOur OF nSr coming out ana inc
moment OF her eclipse. Like that OF the butter
fly her life is but little gleam OF time between
two eternities.
And yet it is cruel to blame the little devil
Schools and parents have deliberately manu-
factured the debutante OF today; uncontrolled,
undisciplined and unsurpassed the poor dear
thing has been permitted TO walk the primrose
path. encouraged into the natural belief that she
is all that matters Ii is not her fault that il is
as easy TO tell a house in which there is debu-
tante as il is to recognize one in which there IS
scarlet fever Nevertheless. there is room for
optimism in the last analysis. With amazingly
few exceptions the debutante comes through this
period of fapperdom as through an Illness, a
contagious disease OF childhood. 1t is the sur
yival of the fttest Once let her realize the re-
sponsibfty OF marriage and she will think back
upon her debutante days hectic dream. She
will find herself looking at life through the right
end of the telescope and discover that she is not
the leading girl in sap-dash musical play, but
smaIl-part lady in the three-act drama of life
And as such there will be many moments when
she will stand rooted before her own tiny girl,
asleep in a crib, and wonder what she will do as
a debutante. Viii history repeat itself? Is the
future always the past entered through another
gate? Or, is it likely that, with the encroach-
ment of blue laws, her own little debutante will
do her Tapping in a crinoline and spend the hrst
year of her freedom in mittens?
After all there have always been debutantes.
They have been the mothers of this great coun-
try So do not let us judge too harshly those OF
today whose adolescence has been disturbed by
the world chaos of these times. / pin my faith
to the American women....Q am married 10