A certain measure of the sophisticated or unsophistication of a youthful damsel may be found in her manner o f receiving the attentions of a stranger in a station different from her own.

Young women, themselves but rarely unsophisticated, view with a certain

pitying sort of curiosity unsophisticatedness in men.  And

A young man’s unsophisticatedeness it is a great delight to a woman to

eradicate.  Yet

A girl regards with complex emotions the man who has blossomed under the genial warmth of her rays; the flattery to own powers is counterbalanced by the evidence of lack of power in him.

 

* * *

 

A girl thinks she detects flippancy in seriousness. A woman thinks she detects seriousness in flippancy.

 

* * *

 

What would be conduct decidedly risqué in a city miss, is often innocent playfulness in a country maid.

 

* * *

 

Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, girls play with love as if it

were a doll; very soon after twenty they discover it is a dynamo.  This

is why

An early and clandestine engagement often works more havoc than

happiness. For

Either, one of the parties to the concealed compact receives or pays

attention which perturb the other; or, a subsequent and acknowledged

lover looks askance at the previous entanglement.  Since even if

A clandestine engagement (as is usually the case) is merely a flirtation

with the emoluments which accompany a promise to marry, those emoluments

are not nice things for a subsequent and avowed lover, whether masculine

or feminine, to think upon.  Lastly,

A laxity with regard to the claims of courtship is apt to breed a laxity

with regard to the claims of wedlock.  In short,

Flirtations, like clandestine engagements, are an affront to love.

Accordingly

To the engagement-ring should be as attached as much importance as to the

wedding-ring.  Indeed,

A difficult and a delicate path it is that a girl has to tread through life—and often enough a dangerous. Yet with extraordinary deftness she treads it.  She must win her a mate, yet has to pretend that the mate wins her.  She makes believe to be captured, yet has herself to be intent on the chase.  To be wooed and wedded is the law of her being, yet not for one moment dares she to exhibit too great an alacrity to obey that law; for she knows instinctively that an easy victory prognosticates a fickle victor.  Is she abundantly endowed with the very attributes that make for wife-and mother-hood, a strong and swaying passion and an affection unbounded, she must hold them in leash with exemplary patience; for, alas! Are they given the rein for a single passing moment, instead of being accounted unto her for righteousness, they work her ruin.  She must win her one man, and she must win him for life; but she cannot pick or choose, for she must wait to be asked.