CHAPTER XXIX

A YOUNG WOMAN’S ETHICS

=Girlhood.=--We have talked with each other about a small girl’s ethics, the proper social relations of girls with boys. Your girlhood has been one of innocence, playfulness and unbounded joy. I have noticed with real pleasure that you have not been in a hurry to leave the period of girlhood. Although you will soon be seventeen, and you are quite as large as your mother, you will not be a mature woman until you are about twenty.

=Occasional association with young men.=--You have had one or two schoolroom flirtations, of small consequence, a few times you have been escorted home from school or church by youths who had but recently reached the dignity of “long pants,” but you are now of an age when you will be thrown more in company with young men. Many will call to see you whom you will entertain no thought of marrying. For several years your social relation with young men will be only that of friendship. To associate occasionally with young men who are socially, intellectually

and morally, your equal is natural, enjoyable and in many ways very helpful.

=Girls should demand a single standard of morals.=--You should treat young men as you would wish young women to treat your brother. Many young men will want to call, whose habits and character are such that you cannot associate with them, without injury to your social and moral standing. If you do not know a young man’s record, who seeks your company, have your papa or brother look it up. Be frank, kind and positive in your explanation that you cannot encourage his attentions because of his evil habits and his bad record. Assure him that you will gladly assist him to reform and to step up to the standard you hold for a young man, but that you cannot and will not approve of his life by stepping down to his plane. If all girls would demand a “white life” of young men, fewer would sow their “wild oats.” If all sensible and moral girls would frankly and kindly express their disapproval of the filthy, expensive and injurious habits of using tobacco and drink, there would be fewer “boozers” and unfortunate appendixes to the wet end of cigarettes.

=Many young men are indiscreet or immoral.=--In your association with young men be natural, be yourself, be frank, use good sense, guard against any indiscretion in yourself or in young men. It is a custom with many young men to try to hold the girl’s hand, to play with her hair, to pinch her arms, to pat her cheeks, to drop carelessly their hands in her lap, or to place their arms about her neck or waist. Unless densely ignorant, such young men are vicious. All the males among the lower animals, at certain seasons, make a peculiar noise recognized by the females as a “sex call,” and the males have their peculiar methods of teasing the females inviting their consent to the sexual act. Whether young people put this sex interpretation on pinching, caressing, hugging and kissing or not, it is, in its final analysis, a sex call. These are the methods used by the seducer. These are the indiscretions into which uninformed youths easily drift to their ruin.

If a young man appears to be ignorant of the real nature of these indiscretions, he is to be pitied and helped. If he persists in these indiscretions, he should not be extended the courtesy of an invitation to make another call. If you allow one young man to kiss you, he believes that you allow others the same privilege, whether you do or not. Young men who possess one spark of manhood will admire and respect you more than the girls they may kiss.

=Be sensible.=--In your conversation with young men, have something sensible and interesting to say. Have some charming story to read or tell them. Have them read or tell you a story. This will enable you to help them cultivate an interest in intellectual matters. Many young people get into the habit of indulging in the most insane and ridiculous conversation.

=“Hands off.”=--Moonlight walks along unfrequented streets or roads, night buggy rides, late hours in the parlor, low-necked dresses and suggestive post cards, photos and pictures are unnecessary sources of temptation. When young women permit these social privileges and conditions, young men naturally conclude that they are easy victims. The clear-eyed, frank, pure, common-sense girl will have but little trouble in letting young men know her disapproval of that which is questionable, indiscreet or undignified. They will soon learn to respect her convictions. She will seldom find it necessary to enforce her ideals in an aggressive way. She will kindly, tactfully and positively enforce the rule, “hands off”; she will keep ever in her mind the ideal of manhood she hopes one day to realize in her king. She will never do or say anything while entertaining young men that would displease the mental image of her future prince.

=Letter writing.=--If you should correspond with a young man, be interesting, sensible, cautious and sincere. You should never put in a letter to a young man, what you would object to your mother’s reading. You would be surprised to know how many young men compare their letters from young women. If you will remember this and consider the possible consequence, you will be cautious what you put in a letter.

=Ethics of the engaged.=--Thus far we have studied the ethics of young women in their relation to young men, as friends only. Friendship may assume a more serious nature and ripen into love. Love is the strongest and at the same time the weakest, the most fickle; the most far-sighted and the blindest; the wisest and sometimes the most foolish, of human attributes. Love should listen to the voice of reason, judgment and will. That experience, called love, that makes courtship so delightful and beautiful, marriage desirable and sacred, that harmonizes differences, blends personalities, and makes the two one, is the child of the sex life. When the sex life is normal, the two having lived virtuous lives, love will be pure and intense. If one, or both have misused their sex life, lust, the child of sensuality, may be easily mistaken for love. Harmony, happiness and heaven will reign in the home where both have been pure before marriage and remain true to each other after marriage. Where one or both break their marriage vows the bond of love is broken. The deed may never be confessed, but the estrangement will be felt. Lust is responsible for most unfortunate marriages, domestic inharmonies and divorces. Lust on the part of one, and love on the part of the other, can never make a happy marriage. Pure love on the part of both is the only thing that can stand the inevitable tests of marriage.

=Some advice.=--Shun sudden emotions, cultivate sincerity, covet neither beauty nor wealth, be true to the best that is within you; don’t be in a hurry to become engaged; the first chance may not be the best; wait for the coming of your prince. Until he comes, don’t trifle with your affections or the affections of a gentleman friend by making marriage engagements. This is dangerous, as well as a very great sin. When you have found your prince, you should not postpone marriage by a long engagement. It is not necessary or wise to wait until you are as well equipped for housekeeping as your parents now are.

=Long engagements.=--If your prince is healthy, industrious, economical and has a few hundred ahead; or if he has a good education and a good position, with the other qualities, he can make a living for his family. If either of these conditions exists, a long engagement should be avoided. If either of these conditions does not exist a definite engagement with a man would be unwise.

=Hasty marriages.=--The other extreme of hasty marriage is to be condemned. If marriage takes place when one or both are immature, the offspring must suffer. If an engagement follows a very brief acquaintance, disagreeable qualities may be discovered later, to be followed by a broken engagement. Hasty and brief engagements often terminate in the divorce courts.

=Closing advice.=--When friendship has ripened into love, the vital question being asked and answered; fraternal relations established between the families; and the engagement is a blissful reality, what then should be the rules governing the young woman’s ethics? Inflexible rules would be difficult to give. Much depends upon the man to whom she is engaged and the length of the engagement. During the pending engagement both should remember that they are not married, and hence there are liberties in the married life that are not theirs until the civil phase of marriage has completed their oneness. All embracing and sitting in each other’s lap should be entirely avoided. Pictures, showbills and post cards have taught in recent years some very vicious lessons to the youth. An occasional good-by kiss between the engaged, at the close of a call, just before parting, unaccompanied by an embrace should result in no harm to either.

She should be frank, sincere and earnest, versatile, entertaining and affectionate, but very discreet. If she follows these simple and essential rules, she and her prince will be all the happier during their pending engagement and will respect and love each other all the more through life.