A correspondent sends us an envelope which he uses for storing purposes. The envelope is not as convenient as the commercial envelope made specially for negatives, for it has a flap and opens at the side, whereas the manila envelope opens at the end, has no flap, and there is a small crescent cut in the edge, which makes it convenient to remove the plate from the envelope. The open end of the envelope should be placed at the back of the pigeon-hole, both for preservation of the negative and to keep it free from dust.
This Department is conducted in the interest of Girls and Young Women, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on the subject so far as possible. Correspondents should address Editor.
I am sorry, dear Mildred and Nancy, that you and I have so very different an opinion on the subject of punctuality. You say, scornfully, "What does it matter about five minutes, or three minutes, and our teacher makes just as much fuss when we are two or three minutes tardy as if we were an hour late?"
Suppose you were going to Montreal to visit Aunt Katharine and your cousins, and you were to meet Uncle Leo and Cousin Margaret at quarter to eight o'clock. Don't you think Uncle Leo would be annoyed if you should fail to keep the appointment to the very minute, and what about the rail-way train in the case? For a traveller going anywhere on a boat or in the cars must be punctual to an instant, or he will be left. We find that very unpunctual people can accommodate themselves to the ways of trains in this particular.
We have no right to waste our own time, girls, and certainly we have no right to waste that of other people. To do so is most thoughtless and unkind. If you are in a class, your unpunctuality may inconvenience and disturb all the others, and very much annoy your teacher. If you are on a committee, and come late to the place of meeting, you throw every one else out of her orbit. People have many engagements in a single day. They can keep none of them to advantage if they are hindered by the careless person who does not keep hers conscientiously.
This whole matter of keeping engagements is one in which you must establish good habits. Never promise to go anywhere, or do anything, to make a visit, or take a table at a fair, or help a friend who needs assistance, and then break your word. A girl's word is a sacred thing. If it is only to sit for an hour with an older friend, or to take luncheon and a walk with Jenny on Saturday, or to write a letter for the cook, who cannot write her letter for herself, keep your word and be on time. Nothing else is worthy such a girl as the one I have in my mind while I write, so clever and sensible, and, in the main, so satisfactory that I cannot bear her to have even one little flaw. I don't want to think of her as one of those people who come hustling into church and Sunday-school ten minutes late, and who disturb everybody else in places of amusement by the same habit. And I cannot imagine one of my girls as, by-and-by, going anywhere late to dinner, a most grievous social fault.
