N&W in 1908--College vacation

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[I have been posting most newspaper articles in chronological order, but I am advancing this one so that it will be posted 100 years to the day after it appeared in the Bluefield newspaper.  Even allowing for the fancy journalistic prose of the day, it would appear that college students then had more fun on the trip home for Christmas than today's students traveling in their four- wheeler boxes or crammed into steerage in a flying fuselage.]

Bluefield Daily Telegraph
December 19, 1908

HUNDREDS OF GIRLS HOME FOR HOLIDAYS
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Usual Christmas Vacation Spectacle Witnessed at Local Passenger Station Last Night

    Last night at the local station the people who met train No. 3 were treated to the usual Christmas vacation spectacle of hundreds of girls returning from school to their homes in West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio and other states.  Sullins and Martha Washington colleges were represented last night by the home seekers and a prettier or more jolly bunch of school girls never struck this city than those last night.
    The train had no sooner stopped than fifty or more jumped off and rushed up and down the platform, and in their white waists and fluffy hair they made a spectacle which drew over a hundred people to the end of the station where the Pullmans were located.  Here they sang songs and gave yell after yell while a crowd of Bluefield fellows stood by and watched them, applauding after each song.
    Then there were the rapid good byes of those who left the train here.  As soon as these goodbyes were spoken girls rushed into the arms of their fathers and mothers and the scene was really worth seeing.  Fond papas and sisters with brothers and mothers hugged and kissed their returning daughters and then stood them off and looked at them to see what changes a few months at school had made.  They perhaps looked a little happy as a result of the fact that they were home and that Christmas was near, but outside of that very little change was noticeable except in some cases a little fullness of the cheeks and the pink brought about by the excitement of getting home.
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[A subsequent paragraph listing the names of some of the local girls who came in on the train is omitted here.  It's interesting that the reporter mentioned Sullins and Martha Washington colleges because both were on the Bristol line, Sullins at Bristol and Martha Washington at Abingdon, and those students would have had to ride east to Christiansburg to change to No. 3 to go west.  Maybe the reporter did not feel that it was necessary to report that girls from the other colleges along the route of No. 3 would be on the train ]

Gordon Hamilton
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