Girls are so prone to over-estimate their usefulness and greatness and
social prestige. The average girl of eighteen or twenty is always “It” in
her own estimation. And if she is a city-bred girl she sets a very low
estimation on the young man from the country. “He is too slow,” or “too
much of a jay,” no odds how sincere he may be. She prefers the flashy,
dashing, frivolous city-bred bubble who is always bursting with light wit
and shady insinuations. The traveling man is her ideal, whether she knows
anything about his character or not.
A story just reached me through a mysterious channel about two rather
pretty, well-dressed but flippant school teachers, who went from a
Pennsylvania city to a nearby country village to teach in the local
school. They felt country life a bore at first because traveling men
seldom came that way. So, by way of making country life more tolerable,
they began to cultivate the acquaintance of the neighborhood boys. Some
of these they flattered and smiled upon and encouraged, and in return
were treated often to candies, fruits, and were escorted to card parties
and country dances and given a good time. When sleighing season came two
of the rustic swains, who earned the munificent sum of three dollars
per week, chipped in and hired a two-horse outfit at the cost of four
dollars, and invited the two young teachers to take a ride with them and
eat supper at a famous chicken and waffle resort at the far end of the
valley.
The girls pretended to be delighted, and the party drove off gaily amid
cheers and the jingle of bells. When the hotel was reached, where an
elaborate and expensive supper had been ordered in advance, the gay,
giddy teachers jumped out of the sleigh and ran into the warm parlor,
while the unsuspecting young men drove around to the stable to see that
the horses were properly attended to. In the parlor the girls met a gay
party of young folks, of aristocratic tastes and manners, from their home
city, who knew the two teachers. “Who brought you here?” inquired one
of the city girls, to which one of the deceitful and shameless teachers
responded: “Oh, a couple of country prunes—a pair of dubs brought us.
Gee, but they are slow and jayish.”
But at the supper table these same shameless marms made an awful fuss
over the country boys, thoroughly disgusting their city friends. Their
hypocrisy and duplicity and deceitfulness was actually sickening to
those city people who expected far greater honor and more stability of
character in women capable of teaching school. How much better for these
deceitful girls to have remained silent on the subject of their escorts,
after receiving and accepting favors from them, and pretending that they
were delighted with their society. They have now lowered themselves in
the estimation of those friends who witnessed their hypocrisy to such
an extent that they can never reinstate themselves again. Nobody likes
a hypocrite, no difference how handsome or brilliant they may be. The
honest, sincere and truthful girl is always respected and admired and
loved.
Twenty years ago a young school teacher of my acquaintance was teaching
out on the mountain, and to get taken home and back again to her boarding
house, she pretended to be very fond of a young mountaineer who owned a
horse and sleigh and buggy. The poor fellow fell desperately in love with
her and she encouraged him, but when the school term was ended she took
advantage of the first opportunity to insult him and throw him over, with
as little feeling as though he had been a worn-out shoe.
She afterwards married a young man not half so honorable as the young
mountaineer, whom she jilted so cruelly. He deserted her ten years ago,
leaving her a family of helpless children and a broken heart. “As you
sow, so shall you reap.” There is no more dangerous game to play than to
play hypocrite. No one means to become hardened in the game, but it grows
on a person and poisons all the nobler impulses of the soul, and as age
advances, the face hardens and every line in the countenance tells the
secret thoughts that have always haunted the mind. The hypocrite cannot
hide her sins from the trained eye of the observer, and the world is
unforgiving toward the deceptive soul.