There may be no harm in all this sort of thing, but it is well for the discreet maiden and matron to avoid giving any cause for the enemy to blaspheme,—in other words, for the gossip to make herself busy and dangerous. To this end, late hours in shaded corners of verandas, moonlight sails and walks, and beach-promenades well on toward midnight, are to be shunned. While these may be innocent per se, they give rise to scandal. The young girl may always have a chaperon to whom to refer as to the proprieties, but it is not the young girl who is most talked about. The married woman whose husband lets her have her own way is a law unto herself, and she must be careful not to make that law too lax. It takes very little to set silly tongues wagging; it takes months and years to check the commotion they have made.
PROMISCUOUS FRIENDSHIPS
Promiscuous intimacies at summer resorts are a great mistake. Unless a woman knows all about a fellow guest, she should not get into the habit of running into her room, or of talking with her as with a lifelong friend. She may be pleasant toward all, and intimate with none.
It is a well-known fact that there is no other hotbed of gossip equal to a hotel or a boarding-house. Women, released from the cares and anxieties of housekeeping and home-making, turn their time and thoughts to fancy work and scandal. Each arrival runs the gantlet of criticism and comment, and afterward becomes the subject of “confidential” conversations upon veranda and in parlors. Here, as everywhere else, work that will occupy the mind is a sovereign cure for this habit. One can usually sit in one’s own room, but if one does not, there is always a book to be read in parlors or on the veranda, which will show the would-be gossip or retailer of scandal that one is too much occupied to engage in conversation.
TWO GOOD RULES
Certainly in a hotel no one lives unto himself, but each must consider the comfort of his neighbor. Such a semi-public life is at the best a poor substitute for a home existence. Two rules to be observed will make other rules of hotel or boarding-house etiquette sink into insignificance compared with their importance.
First: Do nothing that will make others uncomfortable.
Second: Pay attention to your own business, and pay no attention to that of other people.