About every fad, every fashion, every new thing which is started, the wise woman, Caroline, reserves judgment. Because these matters are not questions of right and wrong, which a sense of duty should direct her to have a decided opinion upon immediately; they are merely questions of taste and expediency, and a calm review of them first is necessary before making up the mind. If a girl or woman is of a sufficiently distinguished personality, and is endowed with prestige and great social position, she can start originalities herself if she pleases. But, if she is a very young girl, this is most hazardous, and the really sensible thing to do is to follow the oft-quoted maxim of the Prime Minister and “wait and see!” It is as foolish to plunge with ardor into an untested new fad--which you may be ashamed of presently--as it is to treat it with antagonistic scorn and swear you will never have anything to do with it! Either course of action may possibly place you in an undesirable or ridiculous position after a while, when the fad or fashion has either shown itself to be vulgar and impossible--or has come to stay! Give no opinion upon any radically new departure, my child. Quietly and in your own mind weigh its merits and demerits, and see if they come above or below the standard of your own self-respect and the true sense of the fitness of things--and then presently decide for or against. Never be ruled by the outcries of old-fashioned people any more than you must be led away by the feather-brains of your own age. But when you have arrived at the moment for decision judge _the thing itself_ by those two standards that I have just indicated, and not by what anyone else thinks of it. Ask yourself, “If I play this game, or wear these clothes, or dance this dance, am I degrading my ideal of myself in any way? Is there really something indecent and immodest in it? Or is it shrieked at simply because some of the shriekers are too old to enjoy it, or their minds have turned to whatever side of it they can fix upon which can be developed into something suggesting impropriety?”