Side Talks with Girls/Chapter 20

by Ruth Ashmore

 

A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND

HAT'S what you are, you and I. We have come to this great city to earn our bread and butter, and the people we loved and who loved us, the people who had kindly thoughts of us, the people who were interested in our hopes, our joys, and our sorrows, are all left behind. And we are facing a new world. Now, how shall we do it? Shall we perform our tasks indifferently, returning home to mope and be unhappy, and refusing to find anything good in life because the dwellers in this new land do not put out the hand of good-fellowship? If that is what we intend doing, you and I, we may as well make up our minds that we will remain strangers forever. There is an old-fashioned song that says, "'Tis home where the heart is," and you and I must remember that we can carry home in our hearts and find it wherever we are if we will only remember that God is in his Heaven, and that all goes well on earth.

 

IN GOOD SOCIETY

Surely we need not count ourselves as among the dwellers in tents when we can build a beautiful mansion in which love and friendship may be enshrined. You who are without hope say to me, "We are two strange girls who are working to earn our bread, and who live in a small room in a boarding-house. How can we get into society—no one wants to know us?" Now I, who am a bit hopeful, laugh at you and answer, "There is every reason why people should want to know us. We are bright in wit and we are healthy in body. These things make us agreeable companions. Then," I continue, "call up some of your honest pride, and remember that 'where MacGregor sits, there is the head of the table,' consequently that where you and I are is good society."

In the first place it isn't wise to solidify one's self into an ice-block and refuse to know anybody. In finding the flowers one must come across some weeds. To make pleasant acquaintances you and I will have to go through some experiences that are probably not quite pleasant. In the office where I work there is a pretty girl, who, after twenty-four hours of acquaintance with me, declares that she never before met anybody for whom she cared so much, is eager to tell me all her affairs, and insists on introducing me to some of her friends by bringing them to our boarding-house. She appears, accompanied by a pleasant young man, who, after he has been there a little while, discovers that I have heard of somebody whom he knows well—this world is a very small place—and so he goes on to talk about his friend to me, and the girl who was going to love me forever becomes sulky and disagreeable, insists on going home, and the next morning at the office declines to speak to me, on the ground that I tried to attract one of her admirers. Now, that was the wrong way. I ought to have waited a week at least, three months certainly, before I allowed myself to believe that this extreme affection, so suddenly born, was real.

 

FRIENDSHIP WORTH HAVING

You complain that the girl who sits next to you is cold toward you. She says a pleasant good-morning to you, remarks something about the weather, and during the day, if it is in her power, very quietly shows you how the work is done. You complain that she is not sympathetic. Why should she be when she knows nothing at all about you? Gradually the weeks go by, and one evening you find on your desk a couple of tickets for a concert given by some club to which she belongs, and a little card saying that she hopes you will bring me. We go together, and after the concert is over she introduces her sister, and possibly her brother to us. Perhaps two weeks later we are asked to spend an evening with her, listen to some music, and have a bit of supper. Her home is only a little flat, but her mother is there, and the whole place is fragrant with an essence of hospitality. Months and years may pass, and that girl, though we may become great friends or simply pleasant acquaintances, will never be as effusive as the young woman who was in the office with me, but she will, as the friendship grows, prove that her affection is worth having and therefore worth winning. An acquaintance made with great ease is usually dropped in the same rapid way. Time does wither it, and custom proves its undesirability. Do you see what I mean?

 

AT THE BOARDING-HOUSE

It is so difficult to know how to do what is just right here. Neither you nor I want to sit at the table like disagreeable mummies and say nothing, so what shall we do? I have no trouble in deciding that I prefer to go from the table to a book, and have nothing more than a mere bowing acquaintance with any of the people there. But you, who are a sociable little creature, you, who wonder what pleasure I find in books, would like to know about the pretty girl who sits opposite to you, and if the young man next her is really in love with her, and whether the young matron at the end of the table makes all her pretty gowns, or if she doesn't how she occupies her time. You, who represent the general woman, want to know your kind, and be of them. You are perfectly right in saying that I, in my love for solitude and books, am different. You become acquainted with the pretty girl; she introduces to you two or three of the young men; you meet the young matron, and at night you are all down in the parlor laughing and having as merry a time as possible. Then, after a while, there comes "the little rift within the lute;" the gossip of the house—there always is one—whispers to you that the matron laughs at your countrified dresses; that the young girl is jealous of you, and that they think there must be something queer about me because I prefer to keep to myself. The gossip in a boarding-house is always dramatic, and she credits people who merely want to be left alone with having some frightful past. You come up to me and cry as if your heart would break, and all I can say to you is, "My dear, it isn't worth it; take the pleasure out of it all as you do the cream from the milk and let the rest go. Sometimes in a boarding-house an acquaintance becomes a friend, but it is only occasionally that this happens, so regard these people as you do the pleasure of the moment. Get from your intercourse with them all that you can, innocently, and refuse to see or hear the disagreeable side." After we have had a little experience we learn the absolute unstability of sudden friendships, whether made in the office or in the parlor. We know by heartaches and tears shed, by disappointments and facts, that friendship is a plant of very slow growth, and that it must be as tenderly cared for as the finest orchid.

 

AT THE CHURCH

You have brought from your clergyman at home a letter of introduction to a clergyman in the city. You present it. He is genial and kind and tells you that he must find you some friends among the congregation. You go regularly to church, to Sunday-school, and to prayer-meeting, but at the end of three months you know as many people as you did when you first came. Your clergyman has been to call on you, but you were out; his wife came to visit you, and the same thing happened. You did not take the trouble to tell him that you were busy all day, and so both he and his wife came at the wrong time. You think very black thoughts about ministers who are paid big salaries and pay no attention to their parishioners, and how different it is with your dear old clergyman at home. Of course it is. A stranger comes to him about once in six months, but to the city clergyman they come every day. He has done his best in trying to see you and in sending his wife to call upon you. You have not returned her call, nor after prayer-meeting have you introduced yourself to her. I begged you to do it, for how else could she possibly know you? One Sunday there was a demand for some helpers at a concert to be given to amuse the boys in a down-town mission. You, who sing, or who play, or who read, or who would even be of some use in taking the tickets, do not volunteer, and yet there was your opportunity to meet pleasant people and to gain some pleasant acquaintances.

You do not speak to the girl who sits next to you in the Bible class because she is dressed fashionably, and you fancy that she is disagreeable and arrogant. Now it may happen that she is just as shy as you are, and that she is only waiting to have a question asked to induce her to say something, but you set your teeth and look disagreeable. My dear girl, fine clothes do not always cover a hard heart, nor shabby clothes a tender one. When you speak as scornfully as you do about "fine clothes and hard hearts" I am surprised at your narrowness alike of heart and brain. I have known people with the meanest sort of pride who were shabbily dressed, and others who had the tenderest, most loving hearts hidden under rich apparel.

 

ABOUT OUR MANNERS

You and I think that we know all about good manners, and yet, just as the cut of the gown and the shape of the hat in the big city differ from those worn in the little town, so there are some customs that are different, and if we wish to gain a social position we must notice and imitate them. I may be none the less a clever woman, and yet drink my tea from a cup with my spoon in it; but my cleverness would amount to very little if I did not discover that people generally do not do this. You may be as pretty as possible, but people will forget your prettiness if they see you cutting your asparagus and eating it from a fork rather than from the stalk held in your fingers. These are little things, but the little things that you and I must learn if we wish to be something more than mere strangers.

Then, when in answer to a letter of introduction, somebody who could be of help, socially, to both of us calls on us, leaving a card on which her reception-day is engraved, we make the mistake of returning her visit on some other day only to be told that she is not at home. Now, the wisest thing to do, as we cannot go upon her day at home, is to write her a pleasant little note, telling her that we are busy women, that we cannot come upon her day at home, and asking if she will permit us to come at some other time. You, who claim to be very independent, say that you will not give in to her in this way. That is ridiculous. She is a woman older than either of us, and respect is due to her for that reason if for no other. Then, too, we have sought her in presenting the letter, and if we wish to continue the acquaintance and to gain her friendship, we must make it plain to her just how we are situated. Being a kindly woman she asks us to come and have a cup of tea on the home day, Sunday, or else she invites us on some special evening, and then we become acquainted with her. So you see our manners in regard to cards and letters, as well as at the table, have much to do with our gaining friends.

 

A FALSE PRIDE

You say you are sensitive. I say you are foolish. When any one seems to overlook you, you claim it is because you are earning your living. Now I insist that that has nothing to do with it. It is because there is something in you that doesn't attract this person. People are liked socially for what they are and what they can give and not for what they do. When I say "give" I do not mean in its ordinary sense, but I do mean in the sense of being generous with pleasant words, and by showing an interest in whatever is going on. You have the wrong kind of pride about your work. You say, with a curl of the lip and a toss of the head, to some one who has just been introduced to you, and who it is most likely will be only a five minutes' acquaintance, "Oh, I am a working-woman." Now, that is none of her or his business. Strangers are not interested in it, and you have no right to thrust your private affairs upon them. It is quite as vulgar to talk continually of one's poverty as it is to flaunt one's riches, and indeed, sometimes I think it is the more vulgar of the two.

 

FOR YOU AND ME

So for you and me, who are "strangers in a strange land," there are many things concerning which we must be careful if we wish to gain and to keep a social position. First of all we must be careful in making friends, and I think it is always wise to beware of the new acquaintance who is over-familiar and over-confidential. Then, too, we must take advantage of what we can bring from home, that is, the letter of introduction to the clergyman, and to the various ladies who may be friends of long ago of our home people. Then, too, we must remember that there is no letter of introduction equal to a pleasant manner, and no way to keep a friend so certainly as to refuse to listen to disagreeable things about her. It is possible that we may be misunderstood. People are in too much of a hurry to read carefully every life book, but we can try to do what is right, be honorable and true, and our friends will last and prove worth having.

I am only going to say to you one word about making the acquaintance of young men, and I am going to speak very plainly. Let these friends come through the women you meet, for then you will be more certain of their being proper men for you to know than if you yourself had met them in a casual manner. I think if we try, you and I, in a quiet way and without expecting to gain everything at once, we will make for ourselves a pleasant circle of acquaintances, from among whom we can cull two or three friends. Surely this would be good fortune, and having achieved this, which will, of course, take some time, we shall be in positions to put out our hands and help some other girl who is "a stranger in a strange land," remembering the day when we ourselves were strangers.