What does the comparison between the country girls and
town girls in this passage show?
Read the passage from My Antonia by Willa Cather.
I can remember a score of these country girls who
were in service in Black Hawk during the few years!
lived there, and I can remember something unusual and
engaging about each of them. Physically they were
almost a race apart, and out-of-door work had given
them a vigour which, when they got over their first
shyness on coming to town, developed into a positive
carriage and freedom of movement, and made them
conspicuous among Black Hawk women.
That was before the day of high-school athletics.
Girls who had to walk more than half a mile to school
were pitied. There was not a tennis-court in the town;
physical exercise was thought rather inelegant for the
daughters of well-to-do families. Some of the high-
school girls were jolly and pretty, but they stayed
indoors in winter because of the cold and in summer