"Well, daughter," said Mr. Wayne, as Helen and he were sitting by the
fire one Sabbath afternoon while Mrs. Wayne had gone to her room to
rest.
"Why,--" said Helen hesitatingly, "there is something I have been
thinking about, but I'm afraid you'll think it silly to ask you about
it. You'll think I ought to be able to decide it for myself."
"Nothing that is of enough importance to be a problem to my daughter is
silly to me. State your difficulty, and we'll see if we cannot clear it
away."
"Well, father, I'd like to know what you think about boys and girls
writing to each other. Of course, I don't mean the foolish notes they
send back and forth in school. I know that is silly, but I mean
correspond. You see, Paul Winslow and Robert Bates are going to move
away and they're asking the girls to correspond with them, and the girls
all say it will be great fun; but I don't know. You know, mother has
taught me that things that seem funny at one time don't seem so at
another, and I've been wondering if this is one of those things. When
Robert asked me if I'd write to him I said I'd ask mother, and he seemed
to get mad. He said if it was such a dangerous thing to correspond with
him that I had to ask my mother, he guessed I'd better not write to him.
I said I asked my mother about everything. And he said 'I suppose you
show her your letters,' and I said 'Of course,' and then he said he'd
excuse me from writing to him. The girls all said I was very foolish;
that it was perfectly right to correspond with boys you knew, and that
our mothers wouldn't want to be bothered to read all the letters we
received. But I know mother doesn't think it a bother, and I wouldn't
enjoy my letters if I didn't share them with her."
"You are certainly much safer to keep in confidence with your mother,"
said Mr. Wayne, "and I should say that a young man who didn't want you
to show his letters to your mother is one you wouldn't want to
correspond with. I should be afraid that he'd be one who would show your
letters to his boy friends and perhaps make fun of them."
"O, father! Do you think that? It seems to me that wouldn't be
honorable."
"Boys do not always have the highest ideals of honor, my dear. I
remember once, when I was young, I was camping with a lot of young
fellows. I think all of them were corresponding with girls, and these
letters were common property. They were read aloud as we gathered around
the camp fire in the evening; their bad spelling was laughed at and
their silly sentimentalities talked of in ways that I am sure would
have made the girls' cheeks burn with shame. They thought, of course,
that the boy they wrote to would keep their letters as sweet secrets. I
learned a good deal that summer about girls whom I had never seen. Some
of them I came to know afterwards, and I often wondered what they would
say if I should quote from their letters some foolish sentimentality
which they imagined no one knew about except the one to whom it was
written."
"Then, father, you'd say we ought never to correspond with boys?"
"No, I didn't quite say that. I can see that a friendly correspondence
might be helpful. It seems to me that girls and boys can be a great help
and inspiration to each other. I once had a girl correspondent who wrote
most charming letters, simple recitals of her daily life with some of
her little moralizings thrown in. Perhaps I would smile at them now, but
they surely helped me to have higher ideals and made me have a great
reverence for womanhood. There was one thing about her letters that I
thought strange then, but I now think it very wise. She always signed
every letter with her full name, never with her home pet name. I have
often thought of it, and I believe it is a good plan. Certainly, if you
knew that you would sign your full name to every letter, you would not
be as apt to write foolishly as if your identity would be hidden under
some nickname. And you never know what will become of your letters. A
few days ago I read in the newspaper some foolish letters written by a
girl to a man. She never imagined that any one else would read them. Yet
here they were, in print, and the whole country was commenting on them.
They were all signed by some soubriquet such as 'Your darlingest Babe,'
or 'Little Jimmy,' and under the shield of such a signature she no doubt
felt safe. But a dark tragedy tore away the flimsy protection and every
one saw all her foolishness and sin."
Helen shuddered. "I believe I'll make it a rule," she said, soberly, "to
write only such things in my letters that I'd be willing to have printed
over my own name."
"That's a good resolution, and I hope you'll keep it. You can feel quite
certain that if you don't want to sign your own name to your letter
you'd better not write it.
"There are a number of suggestions I would like to make to you along the
line of your association with young men," said Mr. Wayne, after a pause.
"You have had no experience as yet, but in a few years you will be a
woman and maybe then you'll have no father or mother to give you
counsel. As you know, I don't want to shut you away from the society of
young men, but I want you to know how to make it of the greatest
advantage to you and to them.
"Do you know, dear, that women and girls always make the moral
standards which maintain in the society of which they form a part?"
Helen shook her head doubtfully. "I don't see how that can be," she
said, "for everybody says that women are better than men; and I am sure
boys do lots of things that we girls would never think of doing."
"Very true," replied Mr. Wayne, "but that is because the men and boys
set higher standards for the women and girls than they in turn set for
the men and boys. No boy would be seen in the street with a girl who was
smoking a cigar; yet girls, good girls too, let boys smoke in their
company. No matter how immoral a man may be, he always demands that the
women who belong to him, his wife, mother, sister or sweetheart, shall
be pure and above reproach. He will even claim that a wife's misconduct
sullies his honor; but she never claims that his immorality is her
responsibility. She will even marry a man whom she knows to be
dissipated, foolishly trusting that her love will reform him. A broken
heart and degenerate children too often prove how seriously she has
failed. Yes, dear, I am right in saying that women are to blame that men
do not have higher ideals and live up to them. Ruskin says, 'The soul's
armor is never well set to a heart unless a woman's hand has braced it;
and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of manhood
fails.'"
"It's putting a great responsibility on women, isn't it?" sighed Helen.
"Yes, daughter, but no greater than is placed on man. Each sex should be
the protector and inspirer of the other. But instead of that, they often
tempt and mislead each other."
"Good girls don't tempt boys, father."
"I'm afraid that they do, dear. They may not be aware of what they are
doing, but nevertheless they may be sources of temptation."
"I really don't see how."
"Probably not, but I can tell you, for I remember my own youth and know
how girls may tempt boys unwittingly. When in college I was a boarder in
a family where there were several other students, and two or three
pretty High School girls. One of them was very coquettish, and was
always 'making goo-goo eyes,' at the boys, as they say now-a-days. She
couldn't talk in a straightforward manner, but always with sidewise
glances from downcast lids that seemed invitations to a nearer
approach.
"Among the students was one who was very retiring and bashful. He rarely
spoke to the girls and seemed quite embarrassed if they spoke to him.
This girl seemed to set herself to work to flirt with him. She would
glance up at him so appealingly that we boys couldn't help guying him
about it. One evening when she was plying her arts--not with evil
intent, but she loved to flirt and did not understand what that might
mean to a young man--all at once he seized her around the waist and
kissed her furiously. She was in a rage in a moment, and said some
pretty sharp things about his lack of gentlemanliness.
"He stood his ground without flinching. 'I'm as much of a gentleman as
you are a lady,' he said. 'I have let you alone, but you have been
tormenting me for weeks. You liked to try how far you could go, and
thought yourself virtuous because you felt no temptation. You didn't
care how you tempted me, or the other boys. You have tried your powers
in public. O, yes, you are too good to be sly! And so I determined to
give you a public lesson, and everybody here, I am sure, is thankful
to me for it. Now, perhaps, you will let us alone. We want to be good,
we want to treat all women with respect; yet, when you pretty
pink-and-white creatures smile and smirk and set us on fire, then you
say we are bad, we are not gentlemen. Maybe not. But we are men, and
we should find in you the true womanhood which is our salvation.'
"I can see him now, as he stood up so proudly, forgetting his
bashfulness in his righteous indignation,--and we all applauded him, I
am glad to say. The girl was offended with us all, and left the house
and sought another boarding place. In her stead came a real, true,
womanly girl. Full of fun, a real comrade, ready to join our sports, to
help us in every way possible, but always making us feel that we were
in honor bound to protect her from even a flirtatious thought. Every man
in the house was her friend, some of them, I am sure, her adorers, but
none ever ventured to approach her with familiarity. If she should meet
any of us to-day, she would not have to blush in the presence of her
husband and children at the memory of any happening of those days.
"This is the kind of a woman I want you to be, my daughter dear, a woman
realizing a woman's true place and power, as Ruskin says, 'Power to
heal, to redeem, to guide, to guard!' Just hand me the book and let me
read you a few words from his essay on War. 'Believe me!' he says, 'the
whole course and character of your lovers' lives is in your hand. What
you would have them be they shall be, if you not only desire but deserve
to have them so; for they are but mirrors in which you will see
yourselves imaged. If you are frivolous, they will be so also; if you
have no understanding of the scope of their duty, they will also forget
it; they will listen,--they can listen--to no other interpretation of it
than that uttered from your lips. Bid them be brave;--they will be brave
for you; bid them be cowards, and how noble soever they be, they will
quail for you. Bid them be wise, and they will be wise for you; mock at
their counsels and they will be fools for you, such, and so absolute is
your rule over them.' Isn't that a wonderful power that is in woman's
hands? And it is true, as he further says, just here: 'Whatever of the
best he can conceive, it is her part to be; whatever of the highest he
can hope, it is hers to promise; all that is dark in him she must purge
into purity; all that is failing in him she must strengthen into truth;
from her, through all the world's clamour, he must win his praise; in
her, through all the world's warfare, he must find his peace.'"
Helen sighed. "It is so much to ask," she said. "Has nothing been
written to the men, how they must help and protect women?"
Mr. Wayne smiled, as he kissed his little daughter and said, "Whatever
has been written for men I will keep to tell my son, and I trust it will
help him to reverence all womanhood."