A CHAPTER FOR GIRLS 463 



apart as much as possible. But these evils are the 

 result of too intimate and improper associations of boys 

 and girls. Associations of this sort must be most sedu- 

 lously avoided. Boys and girls who are in school 

 together must be extremely careful to avoid too close 

 associations. On all occasions a modest reserve should 

 be maintained in the deportment of the young of both 

 sexes toward each other. Too early intimacies often 

 lead to hasty marriages, before either party is prepared 

 to enter into the married state, and before the judgment 

 has been sufficiently developed to make either capable 

 of selecting a suitable partner for life. These facts 

 are usuallj^ learned when it is too late for the informa- 

 tion to be of any value. 



Parents and teachers are especially responsible for 

 guarding these early associations, and giving timely 

 warning when needed. The youth should always be 

 ready to take advice on this subject, for with their in- 

 experience, they cannot know their wants so well as do 

 their elders. Nothing is more disgusting to persons of 

 sound sense than youthful flirtations. Those who are 

 so misguided as to encourage these indiscretions in 

 young people do an immense amount of injury to the 

 very ones whom they ought to be prepared to benefit 

 by wise counsel. We have seen promising young peo- 

 ple made wretched for life through the influence of 

 one of these mischief-makers, being most unhappily 

 mated, and repenting too late of a hasty marriage for 

 which they were utterly unprepared. 



Young persons often labor under the erroneous im- 

 pression that in order to be agreeable they must talk 

 ''small talk;" this literally means, "silly twaddle," 

 which disgusts everybody, and yet which all seek to 

 imitate. Whenever the two sexes meet in societv or 



