To-day he would frankly tell her she had better play tennis for a year or two with a “marker” or struggle at swimming by herself, and any sensible girl would take that advice!

=FOR WHAT SHE REALLY IS=

Instead of depending upon beauty, upon sex-appeal, the young girl who is “the success of to-day” depends chiefly upon her actual character and disposition.  It is not even so necessary to do something well as to refrain from doing things badly.  If she is not good at sports, or games, or dancing, then she must find out what she is good at and do that!  If she is good for nothing but to look in the glass and put rouge on her lips and powder her nose and pat her hair, life is going to be a pretty dreary affair.  In other days beauty was worshiped for itself alone, and it has votaries of sorts to-day.  But the best type of modern youth does not care for beauty, as his father did; in fact, he doesn’t care a bit for it, if it has nothing to “go with it,” any more than he cares for butter with no bread to spread it on.  Beauty and wit, and heart, and other qualifications or attributes is another matter altogether.

A gift of more value than beauty, is charm, which in a measure is another word for sympathy, or the power to put yourself in the place of others; to be interested in whatever interests them, so as to be pleasing to them, if possible, but not to occupy your thoughts in futilely wondering what they think about you.

Would you know the secret of popularity?  It is unconsciousness of self, altruistic interest, and inward kindliness, outwardly expressed in good manners.

CHAPTER XIX

THE CHAPERON AND OTHER CONVENTIONS

=A GLOOMY WORD=

Of course there are chaperons and chaperons!  But it must be said that the very word has a repellent schoolteacherish sound.  One pictures instinctively a humorless tyrant whose “correct” manner plainly reveals her true purpose, which is to take the joy out of life.  That she can be—­and often is—­a perfectly human and sympathetic person, whose unselfish desire is merely to smooth the path of one who is the darling of her heart, in nothing alters the feeling of gloom that settles upon the spirit of youth at the mention of the very word “chaperon.”

=FREEDOM OF THE CHAPERONED=

As a matter of fact the only young girl who is really “free,” is she whose chaperon is never very far away.  She need give conventionality very little thought, and not bother about her P’s and Q’s at all, because her chaperon is always a strong and protective defense; but a young girl who is unprotected by a chaperon is in the position precisely of an unarmed traveler walking alone among wolves—­his only defense is in not attracting their notice.