e placed in families together, and thus are evidently
designed by nature to associate together, to obtain their education
and preparation for life together. When secluded wholly from each
other's society, both suffer a loss. But while this is true, it is also
true that certain evils may and often do grow out of the association
of the two sexes of young people, so serious in character that many
wise and good men and women have felt that the sexes should be reared
and educated apart as much as possible. These evils are the result of
too intimate and improper associations of boys and girls. Associations
of this sort must be most sedulously avoided. Boys and girls who are
in school together must be extremely careful to avoid too close
associations. On all occasions a modest reserve should be maintained
in the deportment of the young of both sexes toward each other. Too
early friendships formed often lead to hasty marriages, before either
party is prepared to enter into the married state, and before the
judgment has been sufficiently developed to make either capable of
selecting a suitable partner for life. These facts are usually learned
when it is too late for the information to be of any value.

Parents and teachers are especially responsible for guarding these
early associations and giving timely warning when needed. The youth
should always be ready to take advice on this subject, for with their
inexperience they cannot know their wants so well as do their elders.
Nothing is more disgusting to persons of sound sense than youthful
flirtations. Those misguided persons who encourage these indiscretions
in young people do an immense amount of injury to those whom they ought
to be prepared to benefit by wise counsel. We have seen promising young
people made wretched for life through the influence of one of these
mischief-makers, being most unhappily mated, and repenting too late
of a hasty marriage for which they were utterly unprepared.

Young persons often labor under the erroneous impression that in order
to be agreeable they must talk "small talk;" this literally means,
"silly twaddle," which disgusts everybody, and yet which all seek to
imitate. Whenever the two sexes meet in society or elsewhere, as at
all other times, the conversation should be turned upon subjects of
real interest, which admit of the exercise of sound sense and will be
a means of culture. Such associations do not result in injury to any
one, and may