Chapter 3

"Well, daughter," said Mr. Wayne, as Helen and he were sitting by the fire one Sabbath afternoon while Mrs. Wayne had gone to her room to rest.

"Why,--" said Helen hesitatingly, "there is something I have been thinking about, but I'm afraid you'll think it silly to ask you about it. You'll think I ought to be able to decide it for myself."

"Nothing that is of enough importance to be a problem to my daughter is silly to me. State your difficulty, and we'll see if we cannot clear it away."

"Well, father, I'd like to know what you think about boys and girls writing to each other. Of course, I don't mean the foolish notes they send back and forth in school. I know that is silly, but I mean correspond. You see, Paul Winslow and Robert Bates are going to move away and they're asking the girls to correspond with them, and the girls all say it will be great fun; but I don't know. You know, mother has taught me that things that seem funny at one time don't seem so at another, and I've been wondering if this is one of those things. When Robert asked me if I'd write to him I said I'd ask mother, and he seemed to get mad. He said if it was such a dangerous thing to correspond with him that I had to ask my mother, he guessed I'd better not write to him. I said I asked my mother about everything. And he said 'I suppose you show her your letters,' and I said 'Of course,' and then he said he'd excuse me from writing to him. The girls all said I was very foolish; that it was perfectly right to correspond with boys you knew, and that our mothers wouldn't want to be bothered to read all the letters we received. But I know mother doesn't think it a bother, and I wouldn't enjoy my letters if I didn't share them with her."

"You are certainly much safer to keep in confidence with your mother," said Mr. Wayne, "and I should say that a young man who didn't want you to show his letters to your mother is one you wouldn't want to correspond with. I should be afraid that he'd be one who would show your letters to his boy friends and perhaps make fun of them."

"O, father! Do you think that? It seems to me that wouldn't be honorable."

"Boys do not always have the highest ideals of honor, my dear. I remember once, when I was young, I was camping with a lot of young fellows. I think all of them were corresponding with girls, and these letters were common property. They were read aloud as we gathered around the camp fire in the evening; their bad spelling was laughed at and their silly sentimentalities talked of in ways that I am sure would have made the girls' cheeks burn with shame. They thought, of course, that the boy they wrote to would keep their letters as sweet secrets. I learned a good deal that summer about girls whom I had never seen. Some of them I came to know afterwards, and I often wondered what they would say if I should quote from their letters some foolish sentimentality which they imagined no one knew about except the one to whom it was written."

"Then, father, you'd say we ought never to correspond with boys?"

"No, I didn't quite say that. I can see that a friendly correspondence might be helpful. It seems to me that girls and boys can be a great help and inspiration to each other. I once had a girl correspondent who wrote most charming letters, simple recitals of her daily life with some of her little moralizings thrown in. Perhaps I would smile at them now, but they surely helped me to have higher ideals and made me have a great reverence for womanhood. There was one thing about her letters that I thought strange then, but I now think it very wise. She always signed every letter with her full name, never with her home pet name. I have often thought of it, and I believe it is a good plan. Certainly, if you knew that you would sign your full name to every letter, you would not be as apt to write foolishly as if your identity would be hidden under some nickname. And you never know what will become of your letters. A few days ago I read in the newspaper some foolish letters written by a girl to a man. She never imagined that any one else would read them. Yet here they were, in print, and the whole country was commenting on them. They were all signed by some soubriquet such as 'Your darlingest Babe,' or 'Little Jimmy,' and under the shield of such a signature she no doubt felt safe. But a dark tragedy tore away the flimsy protection and every one saw all her foolishness and sin."

Helen shuddered. "I believe I'll make it a rule," she said, soberly, "to write only such things in my letters that I'd be willing to have printed over my own name."

"That's a good resolution, and I hope you'll keep it. You can feel quite certain that if you don't want to sign your own name to your letter you'd better not write it.

"There are a number of suggestions I would like to make to you along the line of your association with young men," said Mr. Wayne, after a pause. "You have had no experience as yet, but in a few years you will be a woman and maybe then you'll have no father or mother to give you counsel. As you know, I don't want to shut you away from the society of young men, but I want you to know how to make it of the greatest advantage to you and to them.

"Do you know, dear, that women and girls always make the moral standards which maintain in the society of which they form a part?"

Helen shook her head doubtfully. "I don't see how that can be," she said, "for everybody says that women are better than men; and I am sure boys do lots of things that we girls would never think of doing."

"Very true," replied Mr. Wayne, "but that is because the men and boys set higher standards for the women and girls than they in turn set for the men and boys. No boy would be seen in the street with a girl who was smoking a cigar; yet girls, good girls too, let boys smoke in their company. No matter how immoral a man may be, he always demands that the women who belong to him, his wife, mother, sister or sweetheart, shall be pure and above reproach. He will even claim that a wife's misconduct sullies his honor; but she never claims that his immorality is her responsibility. She will even marry a man whom she knows to be dissipated, foolishly trusting that her love will reform him. A broken heart and degenerate children too often prove how seriously she has failed. Yes, dear, I am right in saying that women are to blame that men do not have higher ideals and live up to them. Ruskin says, 'The soul's armor is never well set to a heart unless a woman's hand has braced it; and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of manhood fails.'"

"It's putting a great responsibility on women, isn't it?" sighed Helen.

"Yes, daughter, but no greater than is placed on man. Each sex should be the protector and inspirer of the other. But instead of that, they often tempt and mislead each other."

"Good girls don't tempt boys, father."

"I'm afraid that they do, dear. They may not be aware of what they are doing, but nevertheless they may be sources of temptation."

"I really don't see how."

"Probably not, but I can tell you, for I remember my own youth and know how girls may tempt boys unwittingly. When in college I was a boarder in a family where there were several other students, and two or three pretty High School girls. One of them was very coquettish, and was always 'making goo-goo eyes,' at the boys, as they say now-a-days. She couldn't talk in a straightforward manner, but always with sidewise glances from downcast lids that seemed invitations to a nearer approach.

"Among the students was one who was very retiring and bashful. He rarely spoke to the girls and seemed quite embarrassed if they spoke to him. This girl seemed to set herself to work to flirt with him. She would glance up at him so appealingly that we boys couldn't help guying him about it. One evening when she was plying her arts--not with evil intent, but she loved to flirt and did not understand what that might mean to a young man--all at once he seized her around the waist and kissed her furiously. She was in a rage in a moment, and said some pretty sharp things about his lack of gentlemanliness.

"He stood his ground without flinching. 'I'm as much of a gentleman as you are a lady,' he said. 'I have let you alone, but you have been tormenting me for weeks. You liked to try how far you could go, and thought yourself virtuous because you felt no temptation. You didn't care how you tempted me, or the other boys. You have tried your powers in public. O, yes, you are too good to be sly! And so I determined to give you a public lesson, and everybody here, I am sure, is thankful to me for it. Now, perhaps, you will let us alone. We want to be good, we want to treat all women with respect; yet, when you pretty pink-and-white creatures smile and smirk and set us on fire, then you say we are bad, we are not gentlemen. Maybe not. But we are men, and we should find in you the true womanhood which is our salvation.'

"I can see him now, as he stood up so proudly, forgetting his bashfulness in his righteous indignation,--and we all applauded him, I am glad to say. The girl was offended with us all, and left the house and sought another boarding place. In her stead came a real, true, womanly girl. Full of fun, a real comrade, ready to join our sports, to help us in every way possible, but always making us feel that we were in honor bound to protect her from even a flirtatious thought. Every man in the house was her friend, some of them, I am sure, her adorers, but none ever ventured to approach her with familiarity. If she should meet any of us to-day, she would not have to blush in the presence of her husband and children at the memory of any happening of those days.

"This is the kind of a woman I want you to be, my daughter dear, a woman realizing a woman's true place and power, as Ruskin says, 'Power to heal, to redeem, to guide, to guard!' Just hand me the book and let me read you a few words from his essay on War. 'Believe me!' he says, 'the whole course and character of your lovers' lives is in your hand. What you would have them be they shall be, if you not only desire but deserve to have them so; for they are but mirrors in which you will see yourselves imaged. If you are frivolous, they will be so also; if you have no understanding of the scope of their duty, they will also forget it; they will listen,--they can listen--to no other interpretation of it than that uttered from your lips. Bid them be brave;--they will be brave for you; bid them be cowards, and how noble soever they be, they will quail for you. Bid them be wise, and they will be wise for you; mock at their counsels and they will be fools for you, such, and so absolute is your rule over them.' Isn't that a wonderful power that is in woman's hands? And it is true, as he further says, just here: 'Whatever of the best he can conceive, it is her part to be; whatever of the highest he can hope, it is hers to promise; all that is dark in him she must purge into purity; all that is failing in him she must strengthen into truth; from her, through all the world's clamour, he must win his praise; in her, through all the world's warfare, he must find his peace.'"

Helen sighed. "It is so much to ask," she said. "Has nothing been written to the men, how they must help and protect women?"

Mr. Wayne smiled, as he kissed his little daughter and said, "Whatever has been written for men I will keep to tell my son, and I trust it will help him to reverence all womanhood."