ON COURTESY TO WOMEN AND GIRLS.
Continuing our discussion on women and girls, there is still more to be said than can even be suggested here in this short space. It is not by any means the intention of this Department to be prudish and priggish. Nor is it the intention to lay down herein laws that cannot be easily followed in every-day life. The idea is merely to point out familiar ideas, which often lose their efficacy because of the carelessness of the individual. In fact, many a boy would deny that he ever broke one of these simple and well-known laws of courtesy, and yet he probably does break many of them day after day.
These are the days when girls and women not only ride bicycles, not only take care of themselves in pleasure and amusement, but go regularly to their work in almost as large numbers as men. Many a girl goes about town or city night and day to and from her work; many a girl enters different branches of athletics hitherto only supposed to be open to men; and, indeed, men are constantly finding themselves in woman's society in business as well as in pleasure.
Some boys, and unfortunately a great many men, feel that, far from forcing them to behave towards women at all times as they have been in the habit of doing when they were in evening dress, this gradual change, this habit of seeing women more frequently and under all sorts of conditions, is taking off the restraint they have felt in their presence, and bringing them down to their level. If the boys would only think of the matter more or less seriously, they would soon find that as one boy treats another, so he will be judged by the general audience. How much more is this true in a boy's treatment of girls, whether they be known to him or not! Certain laws in this world are very binding, and it is useless to try to break them. You cannot put two stones in exactly the same place. No one ever ate his cake and had it too. And no boy who has not a distinct appreciation of the courtesy due from every man to every woman can have a thorough respect for himself. One is just as impossible as are the others.
If you have any ambition to bear yourself well, to succeed in life in all ways as well as in the financial way, which is commonly understood when "success" is mentioned, you must become aware of the fact that you cannot live any kind of life you may like for years and still have the highest character. It is the little incidents from day to day which make a man's character, and perhaps the strongest of all these little incidents are those which concern the treatment of women and girls by men and boys. The habit of being constantly with women sometimes cultivates the habit of paying little attention to them, of not recollecting that they are to be treated with never-failing courtesy. This is but a step in the direction leading to such incidents as one sees in Europe, where young brothers sit about the house in their uniforms paid for by their sisters' sewing or teaching, and let these same sisters bring their shoes, or coats, or glasses of water, and what not. When we go to Germany and see this sort of thing, we acquire a contempt for the men of that race. They do not begin to equal the vigor, the manliness, the civilization, of our American men. And yet we must not behold the mote in our brother's eye unless we consider the beam in our own. We must not criticise others unless we can at least say that our own men have a clear idea of their proper course in such a matter.
Furthermore, when you are dealing with the other sex it is wise to bear in mind that as you treat them, so are you building up character in yourself. If you do not bear in mind the courtesies of all kinds which are woman's due, you cannot retain for any length of time a pride in yourself, a satisfaction with your behavior, which is commonly called self-respect; and without self-respect you will have a hard time of it in the world.
In other words, the higher the pedestal on which you place all women, both of your acquaintance and not of your acquaintance, the higher you are putting yourself, the better your standards will be, and the better man you will make yourself.