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It was a late starry night in South Bend, Indiana, when the junior class of Miss Barbary’s Finishing School displayed their ladylike graces on stage to music from the accompanying Young Ladies Orchestra. The set and decorations were made from a local boys school, and it was quite common for the young debutantes to be seen trying to catch the eye of the painters as they finished their last strokes on the backdrop while the girls, in street clothes, practiced their graces on platforms made of discarded tables decorated with painted cardboard. The girls had been instructed to wear pale pink gowns, and all complied, but poor Mabel had sprained her ankle the morning of the show and was feeling quite destitute trying to still look elegant while seated, as the other girls stood.
I don’t remember where I found this little photo but it’s been on my bookcase for a long while. Isn’t it worthy of creating a story? There are so many that could be made up from this, yet the back is blank, leaving us to fill in the blanks ourselves. What story do you think it tells?