From The Tacoma Times, December 2, 1913. By Berton Braley.
We knock and criticize her,
We scold, apostrophize her,
We wish that she were wiser,
More capable and kind;
Her path we’re always stalking
To criticize her talking,
Her clothes, her way of walking,
Her manners and her mind.
We say, “Oh, highty-tighty!
She’s frivolous and flighty
And all her ways are mighty
Undignified to see;
She dances and she chatters,
Our olden rules she shatters
And laughs at serious matters
With unabated glee.”
We chide and we correct her,
We shadow and detect her,
We study and dissect her
With all her smiles and tears;
And find, on looking o’er her
(And learning to adore her),
She’s just like girls before her
For twenty thousand years!