Rock Island Daily Argus

THEY TALKED IT OVER.

Two Sweet Girl Graduates Have a Nice Confab.

Miss Mae Madeline Gushington,
Miss J. Hortense L. Softpate,
Sweet Girl Graduates.

Miss Mae—How you getting along, Hortense?
Miss J. Hortense—Oh, slow enough. It's worse than pulling teeth. I never could write an essay.
Miss Mae—Nor I. But really, you know, we have so little to put in. Professor Wise was so kind to outline the whole thing for us, wasn't he?
"Oh, yes, indeed. But I wish now I'd chosen an easier topic than 'Drifting Where?' I've only got as far as 'We are standing tonight on the threshold of life, looking out over its tempestuous sea and drifting we know not where.'"
"Oh, that is perfectly lovely, Hortense."
"It is pretty, isn't it? I got it out of an old scrapbook. How are you getting on with your 'Onward and Upward' topic?"
"O Caesar! Don't mention it! I hate the sight of it. While I think of it, tell me if Caesar lived before or after the time of Christ? I want to refer to him in my essay, and I don't know to save my soul when he lived."
"I don't either. It seems to me it was somewhere about the time of Peter the Great that Caesar held forth, but I'm not sure."
"I'll have to look it up. Now, another thing, Who and what was Plato, anyhow?"
"O Mae, for heaven's sake who or what he was. I haven't the remotest idea."
"Then I suppose I'll have to spend half a day looking him and a lot of other old fossils up in the library. How horrid this graduating essay business is, anyway!"
"Oh, I hate it. But I suppose—oh, did you know that Sallie Rich was going to wear white silk with a train two yards long?"
"She isn't?"
"Indeed she is! And a diamond crescent!"
"Oh, my!"
"And she is going to get up in that kind of a rig and read an essay on 'Simplicity of the Ancients!'"
"Oh, well, she isn't an ancient."
"I don't care. I wouldn't have the cheek to say the word 'simplicity' before a thousand people if I was dressed like that."
"And Sallie hardly knows enough to come in when it rains. If I was—oh, has your dress come yet?"
"No; but I went down to see it for the fiftieth time yesterday, and it's perfectly lovely, and it's going to fit me to perfection."
"Did you decide about the sash?"
"Oh, Hortense! I lay awake all of last night trying to decide between the cream India silk and the pale blue China crepe with knotted fringe and embroidered ends. One reason I'm behind with my essay is because I couldn't decide about that sash!"
"Which did you get? Do tell me!"
"The blue. I finally settled it by getting up out of bed and writing 'blue' on one side of a piece of blank paper and 'cream' on the other and then tossing up the paper."
"And the blue side came up?"
"Yes."
"I often decide important matters that way. But I'm awfully glad you got the blue. I liked it best."
"Did you?"
"I liked it best."
"Really?"
"Yes, honest; but I didn't want to influence you, and—"
"Oh, I'm so glad you like it better than the cream. It is lovely."
"Perfectly beautiful! And blue is becoming to you."
"Do you think so?"
"Yes, I do."
"You're real sweet to say so, and how about your dress?"
"Well, I stood three mortal hours yesterday having the thing fitted for the fifth time. I was twisted and jerked and pulled and stuck full of pins until I was ready to faint, but the dress is going to be perfectly beautiful!"
"Do tell me about it!"
"It's one of those soft, clinging China silks, made to just touch the floor, and it's to have yards and yards of soft, creamy lace on it, and I'm going to wear a perfect mass of exquisite Marechal Niel roses and—"
"How lovely!"
"And a great bunch of them at my belt, and—"
"How beautiful they'll look?"
"And mamma will send me up a great basket of them when I'm through with my essay and—do you expect many flowers?"
"…Oh, a cartload of them!"
"So do I, and I've been a week practicing on the bowing and scraping I must do over them, and the graceful way in which I shall pick them up!"
"Oh, you funny thing!"
"Well, I have. But I must go and find out about Caesar and Plato, and get a book of quotations I want to pad out my essay with."
"And I must get out my 'Composition and Rhetoric' and see if I have the capitals and punctuation points all in right in what I've written. Horrid work, isn't it?"
"Don't mention it!"
"But I'm so pleased with my dress!"
"And I with mine."