THE JOHN O'HARA SOCIETY

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                                             A Delphian Contribution

On March 8, 1930 "Delphian Hits Girls' Cage-Game Foes" appeared in The New Yorker.

This was one of the many "Delphian Series" pieces written for the magazine. It appears the source for these came from the author's childhood. In the early twentieth century Delphian Societies were formed to educate women. Pottsville had one, and Katherine Delaney O'Hara, John O'Hara's mother, belonged to it. Matthew Bruccoli writes: "A gifted mimic, her accounts of the local Delphian Society meetings delighted her children and later yielded the series of New Yorker sketches for her son." The O'Hara Concern, page 18.

Here's a member of the Orange County Afternoon Delphian Society protesting a petition to stop girls' basketball.

   To think that in this day and age they'd try to stop the girls from having their innocent fun! Basketball never hurt anybody. The Bonsell girl got a sprained ankle last season, that's true, but she might have got a sprained ankle anyhow, just a simple little thing like stepping off a curbstone sometimes can sprain an ankle. Why, every year football players get killed, but does that stop football? I should say not. Why, more people saw football games last year than the entire population of Peru. That's a fact which I got out of the New York Times. And people will continue to get accidentally killed or  maimed playing football but it doesn't stop the game, so why stop basketball?
   No, I refused to sign that petition. I would have refused to sign it even if it had been an Afternoon Delphian project, which it wasn't. It's our esteemed friends that belong to the Current Events Club that the idea came from. Current events indeed! If they'd keep up with Current Events  they'd know better than to try and put some Victorian ideas like that across.