Do not speak your mind plainly. Certain persons pride themselves on plain speaking, as if there were a virtue in hurting some one else’s feelings. When you hear any one say, “I always speak my mind,” you may know she says disagreeable things. She thinks when she has said that that she can go ahead, cutting right and left with her tongue. They are never people who praise. It appears that those who say “just what they think” generally think unkind things.
Avoid doing so, especially to a man. It is unkind. It makes more enemies the world over than anything else. Men will swallow praise ad nauseum, but they will not take censure.
The eccentric girl had better never have been born, as far as men are concerned. They will have nothing to do with her. If you are eccentric and have prided yourself upon it, the sooner you become like folks the better for you. A man will not pay attention to an oddity. An outlandish hat that causes comment will sometimes drive him away. He may not know what is the matter with it, but he knows he will not ask you out while there is any danger of your wearing it. It is a mistake to be odd in your conduct or language. Eccentricity grows upon one. If you are given to it in your youth, what will you be in your old age? A man would know that if he were rash enough to marry you, every day you would make him ashamed.
The girl who has too many gentlemen friends hardly ever marries. There is something in every man’s heart which subscribes to
“The rose that all are praising,
Is not the rose for me.”
There are cases where jealousy of another’s man’s attentions will hasten a proposal. But two are in the case there, however, and both are in love. Avoid many gentlemen callers. Do not allow your house to become a meeting-place. A man will not fall in love where he sees you smile as sweetly on another man as you do upon him. He will reign alone. He never goes on shares where a heart is concerned. A man may call often, where he knows he will meet other men, but it is only as a friend. He does not fall in love with his hostess. When he marries it will likely be some little modest girl who hardly knows any man but himself.
When I was very young I remember hoping that when I grew older I would have as many gentlemen callers as a certain young lady who lived near us. Every night her parlors were thronged. It seemed to be a general meeting-place for young men. Her sister and herself lavished their smiles upon them. She never married. Her sister married a man whom she met in another place, and who hardly ever came to the house. Another girl had quite as many callers. She must have seen her danger, for she ceased to receive them. Some time later she married.
It is flattering to your vanity to have a great many gentlemen friends who call, and who take you out, but it will certainly stand in the way of marriage. It is fun, doubtless, to count up a long list of escorts, but the girl who can do so rarely counts up a long list of offers. A girl who was so retiring that she was rarely invited out by a gentleman, was loved by almost every man who got well-acquainted with her. She could have counted up a long list of offers but a short list of escorts. At a party she was a wall-flower. She had few gentlemen callers, yet it seems as though all men longed to possess her. She passed most of her evenings alone with her family, and married well. So it shows that knowing many men would rather indicate no marriage than a surety of one.
The cold girl never succeeds. A man would as soon make love to an icicle. A man prefers fire. He likes a warm, living heart. He wants to see that a girl has that heart. A pretty, stylish young girl whom I want to see settled in life is failing to do so on just that account. She in not naturally cold, but when she is at all interested in a man, she becomes almost frigid in his presence. She is too afraid of showing her interest in him to allow him to see that she responds to his. A man wants an affectionate, warm-hearted wife. So he will marry what seems to him to be an affectionate girl. There is a certain warmth of manner that will show this disposition.