CHAPTER XXX
DELICATE POINTS FOR OUR GIRL
THIS chapter is, perhaps, rather a Familiar Talk with Our Girl on the proprieties—which she may not recognize as such—than the emphasizing of various points of etiquette. But the violation of the essentials of self-respect is so common that a book of this character should have a chapter devoted to a bit of plain speaking to the young woman of to-day. We may call her actions, under certain circumstances, a violation of the proprieties, or of etiquette, or of conventionality. Or, perhaps, it is a sin against all three.
We are accustomed to seeing the sign “Hands off!” hung upon dainty fabrics,—pure spotless materials that would be injured and stained by the touching of a gloved or bare hand. People who admire the pure beauty of the article thus marked do not resent the sign. They see the wisdom of it and are willing to obey the mandate. For a fabric once soiled never looks the same again. All the chemicals in the country can not give it the peculiar pristine freshness that was once its chief beauty.
To those who appreciate the beauty of youth, its pure freshness, the thought of its being touched by indiscriminate hands is abhorrent.
KEEPING A MAN’S RESPECT
We have, happily, passed the Lydia Languish age, the day in which the young girl was a fragile creature, given to fainting and hysterics, clothed in innocence that was ignorance, good because she was afraid to be naughty, or because she was so hedged in by conventionalities that she did not have the opportunity to stray near the outer edge of the pasture bars. In her place we have a healthy, fearless, clear-eyed young person, looking life and its possibilities square in the face, good because she knows from observation or hearsay what evil is, and abhors it because it is evil. She is a sister, a chum, a jolly companion to the boy or man with whom she associates. She rides, walks, golfs or dances with him. She may do, and she does, all these things, and she still keeps his respect.
Thus far we go, and then creeps in the sinister question: Does she always do this?
The answer comes promptly: It is her own fault if she loses any man’s respect.
To those of us who have outstepped girlhood, who have begun to live deeply these lives of ours that are full of potentialities for good or evil, there comes a keen insight, and, with that insight, our outer sight becomes more clear; and, sometimes, in looking at young people, we find our hearts, and almost our lips, crying out, “Don’t!”
THE BLOOM OF THE PEACH