What volumes it argues for a woman’s gentle ladyhood and Christianity when it can truthfully be said of her, “She never speaks uncharitably of anybody!”

Let us older people set an example of tolerance and charitable speech.  Too often our children are but reproductions, perhaps somewhat highly colored, of ourselves, our virtues, and our faults.  And this is especially true of the mothers.  John Jarndyce gives us a word of encouragement when he says—­

    “I think it must somewhere be written that the virtues of the
    mothers shall occasionally be visited upon the children, as
    well as the sins of the father.”

Such being the case, let us children of a larger growth show such tact, unselfishness and tender charity, that our children, seeing these virtues, may copy them, and thereby aid in removing the disagreeable traits of, at least, our Young Persons.

CHAPTER XXII.

OUR BOY.

The following is a bona fide letter.  It is written in such genuine earnest, and so clearly voices the sentiments of many young men of the present day, that I am glad to have an opportunity to answer it.

1.  Why should I, a fast-growing, hard-working youth of eighteen, who go every morning, four miles by street-car, to my office, and the same back at night, often so weary and faint as to be hardly able to sit, not to say stand, be obliged to give up my seat to any flighty, flashy girl who has come down-town to shop, or frolic, or do nothing?  Isn’t she as able to “swing corners” holding on to a strap as I? and to hold her own perpendicular in the aisle?

2.  Why isn’t it as rude for her and her companions to giggle and whisper and stare, the objects of amusement being her fellow-passengers, as it would be for me and my fellows?  Yet we would be “roughs”—­and she and her crew must be “treated with the deference due the gentler sex.”  And why am I a boor if I do not give her my seat, while she is considered a lady if she takes it without thanking me?

3.  Are girls, take them as a rule, as well-bred as boys?

Judging by appearances, it would seem that many men share in the feeling expressed in your first query.  I am not a “flighty, flashy girl,” but I crossed the city the other night in a horse-car in which there were twenty men and two women—­one of them being myself.  I stood, while the score of men sat and lounged comfortably behind their newspapers.  They were tired after a hard day’s work, and would have been wearied still more by standing.  A well woman was worn out and a delicate woman would have been made ill, by this exertion.

My dear boy! let me ask you one question.  Why should you, no matter how tired you are, spring eagerly forward to prevent your sister from lifting a piece of furniture, or carrying a trunk upstairs?  Why not let her do it?  I can imagine your look of indignant surprise.  “Why? because she is a woman!  It would nearly kill her!” Exactly so; but you will swing the burden on your broad, strong shoulders, bear it to its destination, and the next minute run lightly down-stairs,—­perhaps, as you would say, “a little winded,” but not one whit strained in nerve or muscle.