5.  WHAT ARE YOU GOOD FOR?—­Are you a good beau, and are you willing to make yourself useful in waiting on the ladies on all occasions?  Have you a good set of teeth, which you are willing to show whenever the wit of the company gets off a good thing?  Are you a true, straightforward, manly fellow, with whose healthful and uncorrupted nature it is good for society to come in contact?  In short, do you possess anything of any social value?  If you do, and are willing to impart it, society will yield itself to your touch.  If you have nothing, then society, as such, owes you nothing.  Christian philanthropy may put its arm around you, as a lonely young man, about to spoil for want of something, but it is very sad and humiliating for a young man to be brought to that.  There are people who devote themselves to nursing young men, and doing them good.  If they invite you to tea, go by all means, and try your hand.  If in the course of the evening, you can prove to them that your society is desirable, you have won a point.  Don’t be patronized.

6.  THE MORBID CONDITION.—­Young men, you are apt to get into a morbid state of mind, which declines them to social intercourse.  They become devoted to business with such exclusiveness, that all social intercourse is irksome.  They go out to tea as if they were going to jail, and drag themselves to a party as to an execution.  This disposition is thoroughly morbid, and to be overcome by going where you are invited, always, and with a sacrifice of feeling.

7.  THE COMMON BLUNDER.—­Don’t shrink from contact with anything but bad morals.  Men who affect your unhealthy minds with antipathy, will prove themselves very frequently to be your best friends and most delightful companions.  Because a man seems uncongenial to you, who are squeamish and foolish, you have no right to shun him.  We become charitable by knowing men.  We learn to love those whom we have despised by rubbing against them.  Do you not remember some instance of meeting a man or woman whom you had never previously known or cared to know—­an individual, perhaps, against whom you have entertained the strongest prejudices—­but to whom you became bound by a lifelong friendship through the influence of a three days’ intercourse?  Yet, if you had not thus met, you would have carried through life the idea that it would be impossible for you to give your fellowship to such an individual.

8.  THE FOOLISHNESS OF MAN.—­God has introduced into human character infinite variety, and for you to say that you do not love and will not associate with a man because he is unlike you, is not only foolish but wrong.  You are to remember that in the precise manner and decree in which a man differs from you, do you differ from him; and that from his standpoint you are naturally as repulsive to him, as he, from your standpoint, is to you.  So, leave all this talk of congeniality to silly girls and transcendental dreamers.