“Mother.” The clear girlish voice rang through the house with persistent intensity but awakened no responsive call. Mr. Wayne, coming up the steps, heard the repeated summons for “Mother” and sent out his answering cry, “Father’s here.” Quick, light steps answered his call and an urgent young voice demanded, “Where’s mother?”
“Mother has been called away for tonight, so you’ll have to put up with father.”
“O, dear!” sighed the girl despondently.
“Is father such a poor substitute, then?” inquired Mr. Wayne in an aggrieved tone.
“O, no,” responded Helen, quickly. “You’re usually as good as mother; but there were some special things I wanted to ask her about this evening. I suppose I can wait,” she added, dolorously.
“Try me and see if I won’t answer tolerably well. What are these weighty problems?” drawing his daughter to his knee as he spoke.
“That’s it,” pouted Helen. “You always make fun,—mother doesn’t.”
“Pardon me, daughter, I had no intention of making fun. I only wanted you to feel at home with me. It was a clumsy attempt, I’ll admit, but really and truly I would like to be in your confidence—to feel that you trust me, too. I can’t fill mother’s place, I know, but I can do what mother can’t, I can give you the man’s view of things, and that is sometimes of great value for a girl to know.”
“Yes,” said Helen, snuggling down in her father’s lap, for they were great friends and she felt his sympathy. “I often wish we could know how things look to other people. I know boys don’t look at matters as girls do, but we can’t always tell just what they do think.”
“That is true,” replied Mr. Wayne, gravely. “I often think that if girls knew just what boys say among themselves it would make them more careful of their conduct.
“For instance, not long ago I was on a steamer where there was dancing. I went into the smoking room, and there I heard the comments of the young men. I am sure the girls had no idea how their dress, figures, freedom and flirtatiousness were criticised and laughed at by these young men, who seemed to them, doubtless, so very nice and polite. Of course, these girls were mostly strangers to the young men and were getting acquainted 11 without introductions, probably thinking it fine fun.”
“Yes, father. I’ve heard some of the real nice girls talk about getting acquainted in that way, and they seem to think it all right. Someway, it never seemed quite nice to me.”
“I hope not, my daughter. I should be sorry to have you form acquaintances in that way. You never can tell what a man’s character is by his clothes or manners. Indeed, you may think you know a man pretty well, and yet be mistaken. I suppose girls who are familiar with young men and allow them liberties imagine that they are trustworthy. I sat in front of two young men on a train not long ago. They appeared well and really were nice, as boys go, but they had the usual boy’s idea as to honor. They were talking freely of the girls they knew, discussing their merits and charms, saying that this one was soft and ‘huggable,’ that another was sweet to kiss—”
“O, father!” exclaimed Helen, in a fury of surprise and anger. “They didn’t talk that way so that you could hear! And call the girls by name, too?”
“Yes, they did, dear. Then after they had discussed several, who all seemed to allow great freedom, they mentioned another name, and their whole manner changed. ‘Ah,’ said one, ‘there’s no nonsense about her. It’s ‘hands off’ there every time and’—he went on, with great emphasis, ‘that’s the kind of a girl I mean to marry. A 12 man doesn’t want to feel that his wife’s been slobbered over by all the young men of her acquaintance.’”
Helen hid her face on her father’s shoulder. “How perfectly dreadful!” she said. “They were not gentlemen.”
“I’ll admit that,—and yet the conduct of the girls in permitting such freedom was really an excuse for their speaking so discourteously of them. The girls had not maintained their own self-respect, and therefore had not secured the respect of the young men. The girl who respected herself compelled respect from them, and that is the idea I wish to impress on your mind. Never expect any one to respect you more than you respect yourself, nor to shield your honor if you have placed yourself in their power.”
“But, father,” said Helen hesitatingly, “most of the girls and boys think it no harm to kiss each other good night, and the girls say the boys would be offended if a girl refused.”
“They are mistaken. Of course, the boys like to have the girls think so; but they don’t talk that way among themselves, you may be sure.”
“But, you see, father,” urged Helen, hesitatingly, “they say they are engaged, and that makes it all right.”
“How long do they stay engaged?” asked Mr. Wayne. “Do they really consider it a true engagement, to end ultimately in marriage, or is it merely an excuse for freedom of association?”
“O, they’re all the time breaking their engagements. I don’t believe they expect them to last very long. Now, there’s Dora Ills. She’s only sixteen and she says she’s been engaged four times, and when she breaks the engagement she doesn’t give back the ring. She’s making a collection of engagement rings, she says.”
“It is very evident that she cannot have the highest respect for herself. I knew of a girl whose sister had been engaged several times and who said to her, ‘Why, Lida, you’ve never been engaged yet, have you?’ And Lida replied, ‘No, and I have made up my mind that I’ll not be one of your pawed-over girls.’
“Her expression was not an elegant one, but it showed that she respected herself, and of course, she will be more truly respected by the young men if she does not permit them to approach too closely. A girl is very much mistaken if she fancies that a young man thinks more of her if she lets him be familiar. On the other hand, it is always true that he thinks more of her if she makes him feel that she is not to be carelessly approached. As one boy said to me, ‘Girls ought to know that boys always want most that which is hardest to get.’”
“But, father, if it’s so difficult for boys and girls to be together and act as they should, wouldn’t it be best to keep them entirely apart until they are old enough to marry?”
“That is what they think in the old world, and 14 girls are kept shut up in schools and convents until they are grown; then their parents select a husband for them, and after they are married they are allowed to go into society. I am afraid our girls wouldn’t like that,—they’d want to select their own husbands.”
“They could do that after they got out of school.”
“My observation is that the girl who has been shut up away from young men, is the very one who doesn’t know how to act when she comes out of school. She has very romantic ideas, and is quite apt to be misled by a glittering exterior. She is less able to judge wisely or to guide her own conduct judiciously than the girl who, having been educated with boys, has less romantic ideas concerning them. No, I believe in co-education and in the common social life for both sexes; but with it I should ask that all young people should be taught to respect themselves and each other, and to understand their responsibility to future generations.”
“And what is that responsibility? What have we young people to do with future generations?”
“Just exactly what we older people once had. We didn’t think of it in our youth, but we can see now that even then we were creating our own characters and at the same time the characters of our future children. Now, I can see in you many of my own youthful characteristics. I can understand why you find it hard to do things that I’d 15 like you to do, and easy to do some I’d rather you wouldn’t do. And if, in the years to come, you have a daughter, she will be apt to be largely what you are now. All the efforts you make now to overcome your own faults are in reality helping to overcome those faults for her also. Suppose the young people knew and thought of these things; don’t you think they would judge more wisely of what they ought to do?”
“Why, yes, I know what I’d want my daughter to do, it seems to me, even better than I could tell what I ought to do myself.”
“Wouldn’t that be a good way to decide your own conduct—to do only those things which you’d be perfectly willing your daughter should do?”
“But, father, tell me why it’s so much more important for girls to be particular about what they do than for boys.”
“It’s not more important.”
“Well, people seem to think it is. The other day Johnnie Webster was going to a show and his little sister Carrie wanted to go, too, and he told her it was no place for girls, and she said, ‘Then it is no place for boys’; and he said, ‘But boys don’t have to be as good as girls.’ And his father and mother both heard it and never said a word. They only laughed.”
“It is unfortunately quite a common idea that boys and men do not have to be as good as girls and women; but it is not God’s idea. He doesn’t have two standards of morals, and I think the 16 time is coming when men will be glad to live up to the highest level of purity.”
“Don’t you think it seems worse for girls to swear or drink or gamble than for boys?”
“It does seem worse, because we have had such high ideals for women; but to God it must seem no worse, because he judges of us as souls, not as men and women, and He has laid down only one rule of conduct for all souls.”
“I’d like to know how the idea ever grew that it was not so bad for men to do wrong as for women.”
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