Life — December 30, 1915 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“LIFE: Life’s Short Story Contest The contest closed on October 4th. So many thousands of manuscripts have been received, cach one necessitating a careful reading, that our friends are invited to exercise all due patience. We shall continue to publish the stories accepted each week in this department until all the manuscripts have been passed upon;.and as soon thereafter as possible the prizes will be awarded, The First Girl By Louise Pond Jewell HEY had been talking of the Marsdens, who had just gone down with the torpedoed ship; and among the kindly and affectionate things said about them, the exceptional happiness of their married life was mentioned. Someone spoke of this as being rather surprising, as they had married so late in life; then, naturally enough, another remarked what a different world it would be if every man had been accepted by the first girl he had proposed to. And he added, that sometimes he thought that first choice was one of truer instinct, less tinctured with the world’s sophistication than any later one. The bach- elor contributed with a laugh that that first girl had one advantage over the wife, no matter how perfect the latter—that she remained the ideal. And then, little by little, they came to the point of agreeing to tell, then and there, in the clegance and dignity of the club-room suited to the indulgence of their late middle years, each one about that first girl, and what she had meant to him. The Explorer began. “T met her in the Adirondacks, and knew her only one summer, After that, I couldn't see her just as a friend—and she was unwilling to be anything else to me. So, all my life, I've associated her with the woods and lakes, with the sincerity and wholesome- ness of the great Outdoors. She had the freedom of Diana, and her lack of self-consciousness. I never saw her except roughly clad, but she always sug gested that line of Vergil— She walked the goddess.” “She was strong and lithe as a boy, could climb mountains, row, play golf and tennis with any of us; and what a good sport! She never fussed over get- ting caught in drenching rains, being bruised and torn by rocks and thorns; and once when a small party of us lost our way, and had to spend the night on a lonely mountain-side within sound of wolves and catamounts, her gayety made a ‘lark’ of it. She could drive horses with a man’s steady hands; she knew the birds by name, and all the plants and trees that grew within miles, and she was familiar with the tracks and habits of all the small creatures of the forest. To me she was—simply wonderful, and, T confess, always has been.” “What became of her?” they asked. Later, she married—a man who didn’t know a pine from a palm! I always wondered. . . .” The Diplomat came next. “That sort,” he said, “is a little too independent and upstanding to belong to my type of woman. The rough, tanned skin, the strong, capable hands—big, probably—the woolen skirt and blouse—they'll do very well in a girl chum, for a summer. But when it comes to a wife, one’s demands are different. The girl I wanted first—and I've never forgotten her; she was a queen—I knew during my first winter in Washington. You talk of Diana; I prefer Venus— wholly feminine, but never cloying. She was the kind that looks best in thin, clinging things. I re- member yet a shimmering green and silver ‘ creation’ she wore at the Inaugural Ball, She didn’t take hikes with me through scratchy forests, but she'd dance all ht long, and her little feet would never tire. She didn’t handle guns or tillers, but you should have seen her pretty fingers deftly managing the tea things in a drawing-room, of a winter's afternoon, or play- ing soft, enchanting airs on the piano at twilight; or, for the matter of that, placing a carnation in a man’s buttonhole—I can feel her doing it yet! She prob- ably didn’t know birds, but, by George! she knew cn! And there wasn’t one of us young fellows that ¢ that wouldn't gladly have had her snare him, Only—that was the one thing she didn’t do! “Didn't she ever do any snaring?” “ Ob—finally. And—the pity of couldn't dance, and had no use for Society! times 2. 6” “ How about you?” the third member of the group ‘a man who Some-