Page:Side talks with girls (1895).djvu/30

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Side Talks with Girls

some, if not all the members of the family with you, and let whatever fun there is to the fore be enjoyed by everybody. The most popular girl I ever knew, and one who was most admired by men and women alike, told me that she never knew what it was to see visitors alone until after she was married. All the young men who were acquainted with her said they liked to visit her because they got a chance to have interesting conversation, or sing choruses, and two or three of them were quite used to helping her arrange a bit of supper for the rest. One of them said, "It is different from going to see the other girls; there you go right into the home; at another girl's house you sit in the parlor and after awhile she comes down, and the family stay away from that room as if the plague were there, and the girl acts half silly, and after a fellow goes home he thinks he has behaved like a fool." And he probably has.

If I were you I should arrange my parlor with a view of furnishing subjects for conversation. I'd have whatever illustrated magazines or papers I possessed in full view; any photographs of celebrities; the piano open and the music on it, and end by making everybody take an interest in everybody else. If you want to make the people about you, young men and young women with whom you associate, better and brighter,