<h2>CHAPTER XII<br/> <small>MEN AND WOMEN</small></h2>
<p class="drop-cap">THERE is some difference of opinion as to
whether properly a man should ask permission
to call upon a woman or the woman should confer
the favor of her own volition. Sometimes this depends
on the age of the woman under consideration.
The invitation to call of a mature woman of society
is the bestowal of a social favor in a sense different
from the same request coming from a young girl. A
young girl must be very sure indeed that a man
would feel flattered by her invitation before she
asks him to call. It is usually safe to assume that,
if he does wish the acquaintance to go further than
chance meetings, he will find a way to make it
known to her, thus saving her the embarrassment
of taking the initiative.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<div class="sidenote">THE LENGTH OF A CALL</div>
<p>The time for making calls upon young women
varies in different parts of the country. In the
larger cities of the East the conventional time is
between four and seven o’clock in the afternoon.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</SPAN></span>
In smaller towns of the East and in most southern
and western places, evening calls are the mode.
When the acquaintance between the young man and
the young woman in question is slight, a call of half
an hour is considered a proper length. When the
acquaintance has mellowed into friendship, the
length of the call is not prescribed. A sense of propriety
will suggest to both when it should come to
an end.</p>
<p>If a servant is in waiting when the caller arrives,
this domestic should take care of the young man’s
hat, coat and stick, or should designate where the
caller may place these things. If the young woman
herself should chance to open the door, she
must designate where he is “to rest his wraps,” as
the negroes say. She must not, on any account,
assist him in ridding himself of these articles, nor,
later, when he leaves, aid him in getting them together.
Nice but socially uninstructed girls lay
themselves open to severe criticism through exactly
such mistaken actions.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>If the call is a first call, the young man should
be presented to the girl’s mother, and if the girl
chooses, to other members of the family. In succeeding
calls, according to conventional usage in
America, it is merely a happen-so whether members
of the young woman’s family are present or not.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<div class="sidenote">THE USE OF FIRST NAMES</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>A girl should not accept an invitation from a<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>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.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<div class="sidenote">A YOUNG WOMAN’S ESCORT</div>
<p>It is the duty of a young woman’s escort to be
looking after her pleasure and comfort in various
ways. If he takes her to a dance, he must see, if
possible, that her card is filled. If it is not filled,
he should sit out with her the unclaimed dances.
Ordinarily, a girl does not cross a ballroom unless
accompanied by her escort or her chaperon.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</SPAN></span></p>
<hr class="tb" />
<div class="sidenote">AT THE THEATER</div>
<p>If a man takes a girl to the theater he should
procure a program for her and should assist her
in the removal of her wraps. Whenever accidentally
or by arrangement, a man accompanies a woman
he should not permit her to carry a package, umbrella
or wrap, unless the latter be a light summer
wrap which she may prefer to retain. The various
opportunities offered men for small services, for
little gallantries of conduct, can not be registered
in detail. They are too many. It is sufficient to
say that young women should encourage men in
such amiable habits. Favors of the sort indicated
are without cost and yet beyond price. If accepted
graciously they react on manners to the advantage
of both sexes. They help to make of society the
pleasing spectacle which we imagine it to be in our
dreams.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>Young women who are guests at a box party
should sit in the front seats with the men behind
them. The writer was witness during the current
year of a small-town box party straggling into a
city theater, where each girl was awkwardly ranged
alongside of her escort. The clumsy unsophisticated
air of the party, each Jack beside his Jill,
needs no comment.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>A young girl should not grant a request for an<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</SPAN></span>
interchange of letters with a young man without
consulting her mother. A young woman should remember
in writing to a young man that written
words are not like spoken ones and are far more
capable of misinterpretation. Though prudence is
not a generous quality, it is one to be observed in
all letter-writing but that arising out of the most
intimate relations.</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE CLEVER NOTE</div>
<p>The subject of letter-writing suggests the miniature
accomplishment of note-writing. The art of
brief sprightly expression on paper is one that is
worth striving for. It is capable of yielding pleasure
in many of the relations of life, in none more
conspicuously than in the relation between young
men and young women. A military man of some
distinction was interviewing the lady principal of
a girls’ school with reference to placing his daughter
there. “What would you like to have her
taught?” said the principal. “Some history;” he
said meditatively, “an appreciation of good literature,
and the art of writing as agreeable a note as
her mother did before her.”</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>A young woman should hesitate to isolate herself
from general society by accepting too great an
amount of attention from any one man unless she
intends to marry him. As long as she is in doubt<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</SPAN></span>
on this head she has, prudery to the contrary, a
right to accept the usual attentions from those men
whom she likes. If she is so imprudent as to shut
herself off from general companionship before she
has reached a decision as to marriage and then decide
in the negative, she is likely to suffer for her
imprudence. By a ludicrous chance dependent upon
the relation of the sexes, the man in the case, if he
cares to reenter society, regains it much more easily
than she. He can go about and take up dropped
threads while she is waiting at home for callers who
do not arrive. He is welcomed back with enthusiasm
by the girls who thought him lost forever,
while her recent avoidance of general society is
counted against her.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<div class="sidenote">BECOMING ENGAGED</div>
<p>When a young man finds his affections engaged
he should formally ask the girl’s father for her hand
and should state his financial condition. This rule
of an older civilization than ours is much ridiculed
in many sections of our country; and it is true that
there are instances where it would not apply, where,
for reasons, the young man should make his initial
plea to the girl herself. But, generally speaking,
the custom is to be commended. A young man may
well suppose that a girl’s father will have her best
interests at heart. If the young man is serious in his<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</SPAN></span>
desire for her happiness he will have the courage to
ask her of one of the two persons to whom she is
dearest.</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE IMPORTANCE OF CHAPERONS</div>
<p>The whole matter of acquaintance between young
men and young women is one of supreme importance
in that it may lead to results of supreme importance.
In view of this fact it is amazing that
parents and guardians so often leave this matter
to the action of chance, that they do not feel the
wisdom of exercising a guiding hand in the choice
of associates for the young people under their care.
We have a prejudice against the European custom
of social espionage over the young. But it is safe
to assume that if we had more of such espionage
sentimental disasters would not be so frequent as
they now are, and more true and lasting friendships
between young men and young women would be
formed. The older members of the household
should take a part in creating the social atmosphere
in which their children move. They should cultivate
the friendship and acquaintance of young people
so that they may be able the more easily and
wisely to exert an influence in the right direction.
Only the opinion and taste of the person most concerned
should be final and decisive in the matter
of personal relations, but persuasion and direction
are mighty forces to be employed. Especially should
parents of attractive young women make it their<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</SPAN></span>
business to know something about the young men
who frequent the house. Said a father of five well-married
young women: “I made it a rule in my
daughters’ girlhood to allow no young man the entrée
to my house who was not eligible in the sense
of character and breeding.” It is true that youth
and age will not always agree on the qualities of
desirable companionship, and it is also true that in
these disagreements age is sometimes wrong and
youth is right; but this does not interfere with the
truth of the statement that maturity should give to
youth all the help possible in the frequently momentous
choice of friends, particularly of those belonging
to the opposite sex.</p>
<p>It is customary, shortly before a wedding, for a
girl to give a farewell luncheon to her intimate girl
friends, including her bridesmaids, and for a man
to entertain his ushers at a dinner or supper party.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>It is expected at parties that the gentlemen present
will attend on the ladies, in the old-fashioned
word “wait” on them. Yet at many such affairs
one sees the men congregated in the hall, eating their
salads and ices, while the women are ungallantly left
to themselves. Servants may supply them with refreshments
if the hostess has so planned, but the
attendance is required just the same.</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE WELL-BRED MAN</div>
<p>A well-bred man will not in general society make<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</SPAN></span>
a marked distinction in the courtesy he shows to a
woman who is unusually attractive and her companion
who is less fortunate. He will ask the plainer
woman to dance and will see that she has ices,
and he may find, after all, some unexpected reward
in a quality of hidden charm beneath the unpromising
exterior. Generosity in social situations is a
severe test of character and for that reason it is seen
less often than one would wish. The man who joins
a woman sitting conspicuously alone and devotes
himself to her entertainment if for only a quarter
of an hour deserves all the warm unspoken gratitude
that is sure to be felt by the woman.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>A girl should be careful not to mistake the merely
polite attentions of a man for the advances of a
lover. Men are afraid of such a girl because of
the embarrassments that ensue, while they feel
“safe” with a sensible one who can be friendly without
becoming sentimental and who does not view
every man she dances with as a possible husband.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<div class="sidenote">LUNCHING AT A CLUB</div>
<p>A woman who is invited by a man to take luncheon
with him at his club will find a side entrance
reserved for the use of ladies, and a parlor where
she may be joined by her escort.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote">A MAN’S LEAVE-TAKING</div>
<p>When a man is saying good-by to a group of ladies,
he should, on leaving the room, turn his back
as little as possible.</p>
<hr class="chap" /></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</SPAN></span></p>
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