Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 63, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1914 — Problem of the Debutante. [ARTICLE]

Problem of the Debutante.

... ■ 1 ' ' o „ At this time of the year many parents are making arrangements to introduce their daughters in society. The long and costly period of incubation is ended, says the Philadelphia Ledger. The girl has returned from a fashionable “finishing school” or from a tour abroad, and she is now ready—albeit With trepidation—to cross the threshold into the scintillating ballroom and beyond that into a world of pleasure and of pain, of singular follies and sad sincerities, of false friends and true counselors. But what of the immediate process of initiation? Is the present exhausting ordeal, from the autumnal housewarming to the sackcloth of lenten penitence, anything more than a nerve racking, sleep destroying charivari of vulgar ostentation and a hectic, frantic flurry to keep pace with- the procession? What yseful end is subserved by this mad rout of overlapping gayetles tbifit burns the candle at both ends and reduces a maiden, who should be buoyant and radiant and beautiful In Bpirlt and In health, to a shadow —blase, anemic and lethargic—of her former charming self?