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.
If I were you I would make up my mind, once for all, never to talk about ailments. A headache or neuralgia or a cough is hard enough to bear in one's own case; there is no need of troubling other people about it. Among so many girls there are no doubt those who are not always well, and there may be some who have to suffer a great deal of pain, but the pain must be kept in its place, which is in the background, not the forefront of conversation.
Talk always of pleasant things, if you can, and of what is interesting to others rather than of what concerns yourself. The mistake often made by invalids is that their world being narrowed by confinement to their rooms or by the care their illness makes necessary, they fancy that their aches and pains, the medicines they have to take, and the diet they are obliged to be contented with are as important to other people as to themselves. This is a point to guard against. Let nothing about liniments and pills and prescriptions creep into your talk, for though you are an invalid to-day, you expect to be well to-morrow or next week, and illness is only temporary, while health is the rule, and the state to look forward to with eagerness and hope.
It is worth while for us all, even when suffering pain, to refrain from frowning and wrinkling up our faces, and saying impatient words. Every passing thought and feeling write themselves upon the countenance, and the young girl is making day by day not only the woman she will be in character later on, but the woman she will be in looks. Handsome or plain, agreeable or the opposite, the woman of forty is dependent for her looks on the girl of fourteen. You owe an amount of thought and consideration to the woman you are going to be, and the friends who will love her, and so you must not let needless lines and furrows come to your pretty brows, but keep your foreheads smooth, and do not draw your lips down at the corners, nor go about looking unhappy. It is possible, even when bearing much pain, to wear a tranquil expression if one will, but remember that the tranquil mind in the end can conquer pain.
Crossing town the other day in haste to catch a train, the horse-car was three times blocked by great vans which stood upon the track. The van-drivers appeared to be unloading their goods in a very leisurely manner; to us in the car, with the precious minutes slipping away like grains of sand in the hour-glass, they seemed exceedingly slow and unhurried. I looked about on my fellow-passengers. Some had flushed and angry faces, some could not sit still, but tapped the floor with their feet, and uttered exclamations, and looked at their watches. One or two stepped out with their bags and walked hastily onward. But a dear old lady in the corner of the car was a pattern of sweetness and amiability, and I heard her observe to her neighbor, "We will probably lose our train, but at this time of the day there are trains every half-hour, and it's never well to be put out by little accidents of this sort." She had the right philosophy.
Through life when little things go wrong it will be wise to accept the situation without fretting, and by maintaining composure, you will often be able to set them right again.
Mina K. asks whether it is proper to allow a friend whom she happens to meet in a public conveyance to pay her car fare and ferriage. As a rule it is not proper. The meeting is an incident, and does not affect the relative positions of either friend. Each should pay for herself, precisely as if she had not met the other. Of course, this rule is equally and perhaps more imperative when a girl happens to meet a man whom she knows, her friend or her brother's chum. He should not offer to pay for her, nor should she accept the offer if he make it. The only exceptions to this rule are such as commonsense indicate. A girl will not make a fuss nor quarrel about a matter of five cents with an elderly acquaintance, who might easily be her father or mother. Generally speaking, however, each person pays her own way, except when in company with others by invitation, and where she is the guest of her entertainer, who does not permit her to be at expense when sight-seeing or jaunting about.