“Were you ever in love, Miss Shirley? For if you have been I know you will be able to understand my trouble. I have had a sort of understanding with a young man for nearly three years without our being actually engaged. Recently he has shown great attention to another girl, and I am left alone much of the time. None of the other fellows care to show me any attention as I have been so devoted to my lover that I have barely treated them civilly. I feel as if I had wasted all my best opportunities and had really no hope left in life. Can you not show me some way to win back my lover?
“Irene S.”
We are afraid that your own deportment has been your undoing. Evidently your attentions to the young man have been too pronounced and he has tired of the love which he held so easily. Owen Meredith says that “man’s heart is like that delicate weed, that needs to be trampled on boldly indeed—ere it give forth the fragrance you wish to extract.”
Perhaps if you had not shown such marked preference for his company you would have proven more interesting, as the spice of uncertainty is pleasing to most masculine natures. You had better treat his “change of heart” with total indifference, and perhaps in this way you will re-awaken his interest.
“I am a salesgirl in a large store and I have read ‘My Queen, No. 1,’ with a great deal of pleasure. I wish I could meet a few girls like Marion Marlowe, but, alas! they do not often grow behind dry goods counters! Some of the girls I meet are nearly all very coarse in their manners, and a few of them are positively vulgar. Why is it that the girls or so many of them who work in the big stores are so dreadfully rude and use such shocking language? It seems to me that there is no excuse for using profanity or telling improper stories, and yet they are both common occurrences, especially in the lunch rooms. Can you not do something to make them different? Please scold them a little in your correspondence department.
“Priscilla S.”
We are very sorry indeed to hear that your associates are so undesirable, but we think that instead of telling tales about them you should be talking to them kindly and urging them to be better. No good will ever come of scolding the girls, and Grace Shirley loves them far too dearly to ever scold them. The poor things inherit much of their wickedness, and their poverty-stricken, uncared-for lives have made them bitter. If you would read the story “For Gold or Soul” (No. 18 Street & Smith’s Alliance Library), we think it would do you good. It will tell you how one young girl in a department store did a great deal of good, and in such a way that it made everybody love her. Do not set yourself up to be better than the girls, but just try to make them better in a gentle, Christ-like manner.
“I am receiving attentions from two young men who have both proposed marriage to me. They are very different in disposition, and I am at a loss which to decide upon. One of them is quite poor, but tries to do all he can for both my mother and myself, and when he is at our house to supper insists on helping me wipe the dishes, and little things like that. The other has a better position and more salary, but he turns up his nose at a man who does anything about the house, and always sits on the piazza and smokes until we are through the work. Mother says the first fellow is the best, but the last one seems more manly to me. Please tell me your opinion?