With never the suspicion of a blush, I looked him straight in the eyes and begged him not to make a goose of himself, adding: “I didn’t think you mistook me for a girl who enjoys that kind of badinage. It is not a bit to my taste. And we have been such good friends!” When he suffocated himself dangerously with protestations that actually brought tears to his eyes, I represented that lookers-on would think we had quarrelled if I left the swing and his society abruptly, as I certainly should do if he did not begin to talk sensibly, out of hand. I set the example by calling to a boy who was passing with a basket of apples, and calmly selecting one, taking my time in doing it. Coquetry? Not a bit of it! I liked the lad too well to allow him to make a breach in our friendship by love-making. When he came to his senses (four years later!) he thanked me for not taking the matter seriously. We gave, and attended, few large parties. But there were no dead calms in our intercourse. Somebody was always getting up a frolic of some sort. Tableaux, musicales, “sociables,” where, in Christmas week, and sometimes at other times, we played old-fashioned games, such as “Consequences” upon slips of paper, and “Kings of England” with cards, and “What is my thought like?” _viva voce_. We had picnics in warm weather. Richmond College boys invited us out to receptions following orations on February 22d, and we had Valentine parties, with original verses, on February 14th. Nowhere, and at no time, was there romping. Still less would kissing-games be allowed among really “nice” young people. This was deemed incredible by my Boston cousins, and yet more strange the fact that we kept up among ourselves decorous conventions that appeared stiff and inconsistent to those not to the manor born and bred. For example, while I might, and did, name our most intimate masculine visitors, “Tom,” “Dick,” or “Harry” in chat with my girl friends, I addressed them as “Mr. Smith,” “Jones,” or “Robinson,” and always spoke of them in the same manner in mentioning them to strangers. For a man to touch a lady’s arm or shoulder to attract her attention, was an unpardonable liberty. If a pair were seen to “hold hands,” it was taken for granted that they were engaged or—as I heard a matron say, when she had surprised a couple walking in the moonlight, the fair one’s hand on the swain’s arm, and his laid lightly upon it—“they ought to be.” The well-bred girl of the fifties might be a rattle; she might enjoy life with guileless abandon that earned her the reputation of “dashing”; she parried shaft of teasing and badinage with weapons of proof; but she was never “fast.” She kept her self-respect, and challenged the reverent respect of the men who knew her best.