Marion Harland's Complete Etiquette

<h2>CHAPTER XXX<br/> <small>DELICATE POINTS FOR OUR GIRL</small></h2> <p class="drop-cap">THIS chapter is, perhaps, rather a <i>Familiar Talk with Our Girl</i> on the proprieties—which she may not recognize as such—than the emphasizing of various points of etiquette. But the violation of the essentials of self-respect is so common that a book of this character should have a chapter devoted to a bit of plain speaking to the young woman of to-day. We may call her actions, under certain circumstances, a violation of the proprieties, or of etiquette, or of conventionality. Or, perhaps, it is a sin against all three.</p> <p>We are accustomed to seeing the sign “Hands off!” hung upon dainty fabrics,—pure spotless materials that would be injured and stained by the touching of a gloved or bare hand. People who admire the pure beauty of the article thus marked do not resent the sign. They see the wisdom of it and are willing to obey the mandate. For a fabric once soiled never looks the same again. All the chemicals in the country can not give it the peculiar<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</SPAN></span> pristine freshness that was once its chief beauty.</p> <p>To those who appreciate the beauty of youth, its pure freshness, the thought of its being touched by indiscriminate hands is abhorrent.</p> <div class="sidenote">KEEPING A MAN’S RESPECT</div> <p>We have, happily, passed the Lydia Languish age, the day in which the young girl was a fragile creature, given to fainting and hysterics, clothed in innocence that was ignorance, good because she was afraid to be naughty, or because she was so hedged in by conventionalities that she did not have the opportunity to stray near the outer edge of the pasture bars. In her place we have a healthy, fearless, clear-eyed young person, looking life and its possibilities square in the face, good because she knows from observation or hearsay what evil is, and abhors it because it is evil. She is a sister, a chum, a jolly companion to the boy or man with whom she associates. She rides, walks, golfs or dances with him. She may do, and she does, all these things, and she still keeps his respect.</p> <p>Thus far we go, and then creeps in the sinister question: Does she always do this?</p> <p>The answer comes promptly: It is her own fault if she loses any man’s respect.</p> <p>To those of us who have outstepped girlhood, who have begun to live deeply these lives of ours that are full of potentialities for good or evil, there comes a keen insight, and, with that insight, our<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</SPAN></span> outer sight becomes more clear; and, sometimes, in looking at young people, we find our hearts, and almost our lips, crying out, “<span class="smcap">Don’t!</span>”</p> <div class="sidenote">THE BLOOM OF THE PEACH</div> <p>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.</p> <hr class="tb" /> <div class="sidenote">THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GIRLS</div> <p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</SPAN></span> sign, “Hands off!” was on her person, although invisible to the vulgar eye.</p> <p>This is but one of the many instances of the free-and-easy actions on the part of men, permitted by well-meaning girls.</p> <p>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.</p> <div class="sidenote">IS BERNARD SHAW RIGHT?</div> <p>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?”</p> <p>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.</p> <p>Men may pay attention to girls who ignore the conventionalities, who allow them doubtful liberties,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</SPAN></span> 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.”</p> <hr class="tb" /> <p>Another point to which I would draw the attention of our girl is that the man should make the advances, should do the seeking and the courting. To this she would reply, “Why, of course! All girls know that.” They may know it theoretically, but does every girl live up to that knowledge? Does she always wait to be sought, to be won, without taking a hand herself at assisting destiny? I think observation will not prove that she does.</p> <p>In this very free-and-easy age, when men are too busy seeking the elusive mighty dollar to be over-eager to show marked attention to girls, it is often the young woman who pays heed to some of the preliminaries of the courting period. It is frequently she who suggests to a man, after meeting him several times, that she would be glad to have him call. It is she who, when he is going on a journey, asks<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</SPAN></span> him if he will not write to her. It is she who asks him for his picture and, on occasion, offers him one of hers.</p> <div class="sidenote">KEEPING ONE’S SELF-RESPECT</div> <p>It is, and it has been through centuries, the place of the man to take the initiative in such matters. If he wants to call on a girl, let him, as a rule, have the courage to ask her if he may do so; if he wishes to correspond with her, he should ask her permission to write to her. And if he does none of these things of his own volition, they may go undone. The girl who, through love of admiration, or the desire for men’s attention, takes these initial steps, loses her self-respect, and, unless the man in question be an exceptional instance, awakens in his breast a sensation of amused interest. He is flattered, and a bit contemptuous. As time goes on and he likes the girl more and more, that feeling may be forgot, but it is always lying there dormant, and may arise sometime just when the young woman would most wish for respect and love.</p> <p>Men prize that which they have had difficulty in winning. The apple that drops, over-ripe, at one’s feet is never quite so tempting as that which hangs just beyond reach.</p> <hr class="tb" /> <p>It is well for the matter of sex to be put out of mind in many of the dealings between young men and young women, but in the question of loverly attentions<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</SPAN></span> it can not be ignored. And in this matter it is the man, and the man only, who should make advances. It is better for her peace of mind that a girl should never have the marked attention of any man, than that she should forget her maidenly dignity in order to acquire it. Such acquisition is certainly not worth the price paid for it.</p> <p>A man must look up to that which he loves. And a hard-and-fast rule is the slangy one that declares that one does not run after a car when he has already caught it, or when it stands at the corner waiting for him, and ready to start or stand at his will. The girls for whom men find life worth living are those who are ideals as well as companions.</p> <div class="sidenote">HANDS OFF</div> <p>Dear girls, be happy, be merry, have all the harmless fun that the good God, who wishes you to be happy, sends your way. But for the sake of the man who may one day seek you and win you—for the sake of the womanhood that he would honor—let all men know that you are labeled—“<span class="smcap">HANDS OFF!</span>” and that you are not to be cheaply gained. They will love you better, respect and honor you more for that knowledge.</p> <hr class="tb" /> <p>A serious mistake often made by girl students and working girls is taking the men who call on them to their rooms. In most cases these rooms are fitted up with couches to look much like sitting-rooms,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</SPAN></span> but the men know they are <i>not</i> sitting-rooms, and the girl who receives men thus suffers for it in name if not in fact. It is a thing that a self-respecting girl can not afford to do, even once. If she expects to have men call on her, she must choose a room in a house where she may occasionally have the use of a parlor. The ruling may seem hard, but there is no getting round it.</p> <hr class="tb" /> <p>No young girl can afford to accept a luncheon or dinner invitation from a married man or, indeed, any attention whatsoever. It does not matter that he may be an “old friend of the family,”—those who see her may not know this and, even if they do, may not acquit her of harm. For similar seasons, a girl employed as secretary in a man’s office should take care that the relation between her and her employer is purely one of business.</p> <div class="sidenote">GOOD TASTE IN JEST</div> <div class="sidenote">DELICACY IN CONVERSATION</div> <p>One of the unfailing tests of good breeding is what one laughs at. Without becoming priggish, a girl should discriminate between what is a fit subject for jest and what is entitled to her reverence. As a rule, jests about birth, death and marriage are to be avoided. A special word of suggestion must be given in connection with the first of these subjects. If you are to speak of a woman who is to become a mother, say frankly that she is expecting or bearing a child. The euphemisms employed in<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</SPAN></span> place of this plain phrase are unspeakably vulgar. It is never vulgar to be frank if the person and the circumstances justify the introduction of the subject at all. One must often wish for more of the old-fashioned reserve on intimate topics. A critic of modern women said of them recently: “Among themselves, women lose more delicacy than any man could take from them.” When one listens aghast to the talk of some modern women, one can but echo the statement. Akin to this unbecoming freedom of speech is the lack of consideration sometimes shown to an expectant mother by her friends. Comment in such instances one would suppose would be recognized as the height of indelicacy, but thoughtlessly, and in a spirit of jest, remarks are made that cause a sensitive person to wince. Unless the mother-to-be confides her sacred expectations, she has every right to have them treated with the respect of silence, and only a vulgar-minded woman will intrude upon her.</p> <hr class="chap" /></div> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</SPAN></span></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />