Page:Side talks with girls (1895).djvu/128

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116
Side Talks with Girls

man cares to hear a woman whom he respects sing comic songs. It lowers her in the eyes of everyone, and the fact that she sings a comic song well does not add anything to the making it desirable for her to do it at all.

The slangy girl is apt to be the jester of the company, and who likes to see a woman wear the cap and bells? Why do not girls understand this? Why can't they see that to amuse people by making a clown of one's self is vulgarizing to the last degree?

A POSITIVE CERTAINTY

It is absolutely certain that the girl who is slangy in her manner forgets to be gracious and doesn't hesitate to say disagreeable things. She is, day by day, stilling her conscience and hardening her heart, and she fails to see why she should refrain from hurting other people. She entirely loses the grace of consideration. With this gone, it is sad to relate, she next loses her belief and her regard for the belief of others. Probe way down into what heart she has and she may, all unknown to herself, still believe, but she has an idea, a very false one, that it is an evidence of her intellectual strength to sneer at all belief and all accepted faiths. She doesn't know enough to realize that knaves and fools can say, "It is not