We would not be—we are not—prudes, but the bloom of the peach is beautiful, and once rubbed off it can not be replaced. The snow-white fabric is too fair to be carelessly handled.
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GIRLS
Last winter I sat in a train-seat behind a girl of eighteen and a young man a few years her senior. She was pretty and bright. She chatted gaily with her companion, who, after a few minutes, threw his arm over the back of her seat. To the initiated, it was evidently done as a trial as to whether that kind of thing would be allowed. The girl, intent on the conversation, appeared not to notice the action. In a few moments the hand resting against the girl’s shoulder was laid over the shoulder. The owner flushed, made some laughing protest, but evidently administered no rebuke, as the offending member continued to rest where it was, then gradually crept up toward her neck; finally, at some teasing remark of hers, it tweaked her ear. Had the child been older, the look in the man’s eyes, as he watched the fluctuations of color in her pretty face, would have warned her that she was playing with fire; that his respect for her would have been greater had she shown in the beginning that the sign, “Hands off!” was on her person, although invisible to the vulgar eye.
This is but one of the many instances of the free-and-easy actions on the part of men, permitted by well-meaning girls.
In nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand a man will not take a liberty with a girl unless she allows it.
IS BERNARD SHAW RIGHT?
I wish girls would bear this fact in mind! Men are what they make them, what they allow them to be. When a young fellow told a man in my presence last week that such and such a girl was a “jolly sort,” and, while out driving, had stopped at a roadhouse with him, gone into the parlor of the house and taken a glass of ginger ale while he had one of whisky, I was not surprised that the man of the world to whom he imparted this fact, remarked, “Crookéd, eh?”
That the young fellow (who, had he been older or less easily flattered, would not have related the occurrence) flushed and laughingly denied the allegation—did not alter the fact that the conclusion drawn was inevitable. The young girl may not, probably did not, deserve the stricture passed on her, but by her free-and-easy behavior she lost something she never can regain.
Men may pay attention to girls who ignore the conventionalities, who allow them doubtful liberties, but they like them because they are what they term “fun.” Such girls are not those for whom men live, for whom they sacrifice bad habits, for whom they look in seeking a wife, and for whom they would bravely give up life if necessary. The true love of a good man is worth winning. It is not won by the girl who lowers herself in a man’s eyes. To her might apply the time-worn toast of man to “The New Woman,—once our superior, now our equal.”