Page:Side talks with girls (1895).djvu/194

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182
Side Talks with Girls

mother, this can be easily done by setting a good example, and by encouraging your daughter's faith.

ABOUT HER SWEETHEART

Some day your girl blushes and stammers and looks extremely conscious, and if you are her confidante she tells you about the young man who walked home from church with her. The wise mother will take that purely as a matter of course, say that it is very polite in him and ignore the blushes and the shyness. But she will find out about that young man; and then, when she thinks it proper, she will invite him herself to come into the home. There he will be seen as he is, and time will prove whether he is the real sweetheart, or whether he merely turns out to be one of the pleasant friends which it is always a girl's right to have in her mother's home. Many girls have made bad marriages and foolish ones simply because they never saw the man whom they eventually married except in the house of strangers, at entertainments, or when these two were entirely alone. And no girl ever became thoroughly acquainted with a man in this way. The wise mother will sympathize with her girl in the story of her sweetheart; will have him around very much with all of them, will make him one of them, so that the girl sees his virtues and his faults, and