Page:Side talks with girls (1895).djvu/173

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The Girl who Goes A-visiting
161

belongings, she uses your letter-paper, and she never has any stamps, but counts on the men of the family buying them for her. Without speaking to you she invites people to visit her whom you do not wish to know, and she places you in such uncomfortable positions in regard to these people that you wish you had never met her. She tells you that she knows you wish her to feel as if she were at home, and all you can do is to smile very weakly. Nobody wants a visitor to feel that. A visitor should remember that she is not in her own home, and that, while everybody wishes her to enjoy herself, still she has no rights in the household—only those privileges which her hostess grants her, and these she must respect.

This inconsiderate girl is the girl you are not to be.

UNDER THE ROSE

While you are having a pleasant time with your friend you must remember that you are at all times under the rose and that on your lips must be set the seal of silence. When you leave you only remember all the pleasant things, and, being a high-minded girl, you criticise nothing. If, by accident, you have heard a family secret, make yourself forget it, and if you have been present at that most unpleasant of all things, a family quarrel, convince yourself that you are mistaken, if you