mean it, but her poses and glances make
it almost impossible for me to keep my hands off of her. I am obliged
to leave her for fear that I shall kiss her when she looks so
mischievously alluring."

The girl, perhaps, would have been flattered by the kiss and indignant
at further liberties, yet would have felt no compunctions had her
victim been inflamed by a passion that he lacked the power to control,
prompting him to seek some other girl to be his prey.

You think men should have self-control. So they should. We will not
lessen the blame of the young man, but the girl who puts the
temptation in his way, even if she did not herself yield to it, is not
guiltless.

The conduct of a pure woman should be the safeguard and not the
destruction of a man, and she can be his protector, even as he is
hers. I heard an eminent woman say that woman was man's moral
protector, and man woman's physical protector, and I said that is only
half true. Man is also woman's moral protector, and woman is also
man's physical protector. She is acknowledged to be his physical
tempter. If she knows her power she can, by her wise, modest, womanly
demeanor, make it impossible for him to feel an impure impulse in her
presence. Ruskin says:

"You cannot think that the buckling on of the knight's armor by his
lady's hand was a mere caprice of romantic fashion. It is the type of
an eternal truth--that the soul's armor is never well set to the heart
unless a woman's hand has braced it; and it is only when she braces it
loosely that the honor of manhood fails. Know you not those lovely
lines--I would they were learned by all youthful ladies of England--

"'Ah wasteful woman! she who may
On her sweet self set her own price,
Knowing he cannot choose but pay--
How has she cheapen'd Paradise!
How given for nought her priceless gift,
How spoiled the bread and spill'd the wine,
Which, spent with due, respective thrift,
Had made brutes men, and men divine!'"

CHAPTER XXI.

FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN BOYS AND GIRLS.

You might like to know, dear reader, if I do not believe in some
intermediate relation between that of the comrade and the lover--a
more intimate relation than the one and less intimate than the other.
You ask, Cannot a young man and a young woman be real, true friends?

Let us talk a little about friendship and what it implies. I should
define a friend as one who believes in me, who expects much