A CHAPTER FOR YOUNG WOMEN 477 



tunities afforded by our lax social manners. The care- 

 ful mother will restrain her daughters from exposure 

 to any of the temptations of fashionable society until 

 they have attained sufficient age and understanding, 

 and until their principles have become so thoroughly 

 established that they cannot be so easily led astray. 



"Fast Girls."— Some young women, like a certain 

 class of young men, imagine that there is something 

 particularly smart in being fast. A walk, a ride, or a 

 waltz with some fast young man, perhaps a notorious 

 rake, is an adventure which has a peculiar fascination. 

 They delight in those escapades and adventures which 

 startle old-fashioned people who still have some sense 

 of propriety. What is the consequence? These young 

 women soon find their moral sense so blunted, that, 

 before they are aware of it, they are led to the com- 

 mission of acts which, but a short time before, they 

 would have regarded with the greatest horror. In an 

 unguarded moment the fatal step is taken, and mod- 

 esty, purity, and honor, all that a woman holds most 

 sacred, are sacrificed, and they are rapidly swept away 

 into the maelstrom of vice. 



Improper Liberties.— The first step usually taken 

 by the young woman on the downward road is the 

 allowance of little liberties on the part of young men. 

 Advances may be very slight at first, perhaps only a 

 significant pressure of the hand, or the arm placed 

 about the waist, or some similar impropriety. By de- 

 grees, increased liberties are taken, until the grossest 

 breaches of immodesty are permitted. We are not 

 overstating when we say that we have met many young 

 women who have been led into wrong-doing, who have 

 confessed that this was the beginning of their down- 

 ward course. 



