One can prescribe no rule as to what young men and young women should talk about. The subjects they may discuss are as numerous as the sands of the sea, and depend upon taste, temperament and education.
As to manner, it is well to insist a little, in these days of brusk camaraderie between the sexes, on the fact that courtesy has many charming opportunities of exhibition in the conversation between men and women. There is a kind of deference that, with no lack of frankness, should be cultivated in the attitude of one sex to the other, a quality that makes for agreeable friendship to a rare degree. If one selects this rather than other agreeable qualities of manner as one to be cultivated in the relation of the sexes, it is because it is one so often neglected.
THE USE OF FIRST NAMES
When a young woman and young man have grown up in the same place and have known each other from childhood, it is proper for them to call each other by their first names, but with acquaintances of maturer years, the occasions for the adoption of this custom should be rare. Nothing is more vulgar for a young woman than an easy and promiscuous habit of addressing Tom, Dick and Harry as such.
A girl should not accept an invitation from a young man before he has called and has been presented to her mother. The invitation once accepted, there are little courtesies which he may pay to her on the occasion of the festivity for which he has asked to accompany her. These courtesies he should not neglect to offer, and she should be gracious in accepting. He may assist her in putting on her wraps. He may put on her overshoes if the weather is damp and a maid be lacking for that purpose. If an extra wrap is demanded he should carry it for her.
In going up-stairs, the girl precedes the man, but in descending, he goes first. In the street a man who is punctilious walks on the outside of the walk, but this rule is less observed than it was formerly. Of course, a man allows a girl to precede him through any doorway. In leaving a street-car, however, he gets off first in order that he may help her alight.