MISS AMERICA

PEN AND CAMERA SKETCHES
OF THE AMERICAN GIRL

BY

ALEXANDER BLACK
Author of “Miss Jerry,” etc.

WITH DESIGNS AND PHOTOGRAPHIC
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE AUTHOR

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
NEW YORK: M DCCC XC VIII

It will be suspected, perhaps, that in saying “sketches,” I have wished to escape some of the responsibility which might have been incurred by a more formal approach to a momentous theme, though the entire truth of the description should carry its own justification. And if the term be permitted in describing the text, it has equal appropriateness in describing the pictures; for the photograph seldom can be more than a sketch, and must be content with the limitations as well as with the privileges of the sketch. The feminine eye will discern unaided by data the chronological range of my pictures. To other eyes, possibly, I should explain that the portraits represent a period of six or seven years, and that those in conventional dress are supplemented by various costume sketches with the camera recalling eras in which there was no photography. What I have said of the American type in the first chapter will explain my own difficulty in expressing the American type by the aid of the lens, a difficulty which has not been diminished by the privilege of wide travel. If I have not revealed the geographical identity of any of the types reflected here, the reservation may, I hope, seem to be as fully justified as certain other reservations which the American girl herself so frequently chooses to hold.

I often have wished that it were easier to substitute for “American” some name which should more specifically indicate the United States. It is the United States girl I am talking about; it is the United States spirit which I have sought to discover, and not the spirit of the wider America of which the foreigner, and even the British foreigner, so frequently, and so reasonably, seems to be thinking when he uses the name “American.” Now that Miss America for the first time has seen her soldier brothers go abroad to fight and to conquer, it may be that in one way or another there will be a further modification of the term, in which direction it would be difficult to say at this hour.

Because this is an apology and not a mere preface, I may be permitted, I hope, to express to the American girls in various States of the Union, from Boston to San Antonio, who have sat before my camera, my regret that I should have translated them so inadequately. It would, indeed, be hard to do justice to the American girl, and one well might hesitate to describe, or even to discuss her, were not her always gracious generosity so safely to be looked for.

A. B.