A sentiment still lingers in the social world—a relic of medieval gallantry—to the effect that a young man must grant anything that a lady asks, even if, to secure it, he must risk his life, or character, or the last “quarter” with which he was to buy his dinner. This asking on her part need not be really _asking_: it may be only suggesting, or consenting to accept. She may only exclaim, “Oh, wouldn’t a sleigh-ride be just too lovely for anything!” She may have become naughty enough, without intending any harm, to say this on purpose to make the boy whom she delights to tease begin mentally to count over his small supply of change to see if he can possibly afford the rig. Girls have been known to take a queer sort of delight in leading a young fellow on to spend his last penny, to contract a debt, and go hungry, because he did not bravely refuse to take the hints that were intended to lead him into expenditure such as he could not afford. No girl who has been properly trained, or who has truth and the elements of womanliness within, will ever resort to any such expedient for her pleasure, but will keep herself from all or any such social entanglements as would lead to anything so base. She will not allow a young man to place her under obligation, even to the extent of car-fare. Teach your growing daughter that to receive a gift of any sort from any boy or man outside of the immediate circle of intimate, well-known family friends, is dangerous, if not disgraceful. Gift-giving and gift-receiving has come to be a vice. It is often intended as a sly, covert method of _buying_ you. Gifts are employed for “padlocking the mouth” of those who know something which, if told, might spoil some selfish or criminal plot; and this is by no means confined to Tammany Hall. Many a girl has kept some dangerous bit of knowledge hidden in her secret thought, and has been compromised by it, simply because she had thoughtlessly accepted some bauble from some man whom she supposed to be a friend until, the ulterior motive being revealed, she discovered that the gift was a bribe, and its possession a confession of dishonor; and then she has found herself in a great strait between her desire to be free and yet to keep the trinket. I had given a plain talk to a company of schoolgirls; and many questions had been passed up to me, in answering which I had touched some of these points. At the close of the meeting, a few girls lingered to speak to me, each waiting to ask some questions “all for herself alone.” So while the others waited at a safe distance, they came, one by one, to whisper their perplexities in my ear. How my heart was taken captive by those girls, as with shamefacedness, with trembling lips and burning cheeks, they asked me questions which were revelations both of the lack of early home teaching and of the methods by which an evil world had tried to make them wise!