Women Are Best Taught by Women

1901

Womanly graces of mind and heart are best taught by women. Nothing can make up for the lack of early mother love and mother care in a girl's life. The motherless daughter knows this too well. It is much the same in schools and colleges. Girls need the inspiration of a high type of womanhood always. They should have it before them at college, and they should also have while away from home the intelligent guardianship and guidance of woman instructors who command both love and respect. — Ada C. Sweet in Woman's Home Companion.

Ways of the Popular Girl

1915

She Is Always Optimistic; Loyal to Her Friends and Finds World Good Place to Live In

She smiles when things go wrong, and does not consider every little disappointment a calamity.

She shares her pleasures with others and keeps her troubles to herself.

She never makes the faults of her friends a subject of conversation; is slow to criticize, and can always find something kind to say about everyone.

She accepts favors gracefully and returns them gladly.

She does not shift her responsibilities on to others, but cheerfully lends a hand to lighten her neighbor's load; strives to keep on the sunny side, but is ever ready with helpful sympathy for those who walk in the shade.

She is loyal to her friends, tender and devoted to those she loves, and generous to all; and she finds the world a good place to live in.


The Second Stage

"Young Gadson and Miss Doppel have reached the second stage of their courtship."
"What is that?"
"They have stopped playing the Victrola and have started to reading poetry together."

The Duty of a Woman to be a Lady

1877

Wildness is a thing which girls cannot afford. Delicacy is a thing which cannot be lost and found. No art can restore to the grape its bloom. Familiarity without love, without confidence, without regard, is destructive to all that makes woman exalting and ennobling.

"The World is wide, these things are small,
They may be nothing, but they are all."

Nothing? It is the first duty of a woman to be a lady. Good breeding is good sense. Bad manners in a woman is an immorality. Awkwardness may be ineradicable. Bashfulness is constitutional. Ignorance of etiquette is the result of circumstances. All can be condoned, and do not banish man or woman from the amenities of their kind. But self-possessed, unshrinking and aggressive coarseness of demeanor may be reckoned as a state prison offence, and certainly merits that mild form of punishment called imprisonment for life.

It is a shame for women to be lectured on their manners. It is a bitter shame that they need. Women are the umpires of society. It is they to whom all mooted points should be referred. To be a lady is more than to be a prince. A lady is always in her right inalienably worthy of respect. To a lady prince and peasant alike bow. Do not be restrained. Do not have impulses that need restraint. Do not wish to dance with the prince unsought; feel differently. Be sure that you confer honor. Carry yourselves so lofty that men shall look up to you for reward, not at you in rebuke.

The natural sentiment of man toward woman is reverence. He loses a large means of grace when he is obliged to account her a being to be trained into propriety. A man's ideal is not wounded when a woman fails in worldly wisdom; but if in grace, in tact, in sentiment, in delicacy, in kindness, she should be found wanting, he receives an inward hurt. — Gail Hamilton.