er of our girls' mistakes is that of imagining that brusqueness
and pertness are wit. There is no other error more common with girls
from fifteen to eighteen; they generally choose a boy as the butt of
their sarcastic remarks--and, to their shame be it said, they
frequently select a lad who is too courteous to retort in kind.

But these faults in boy and girl alike are evidences of a "freshness"
which wears off as the years roll on, as the green husk, when touched
by the frost, falls away, leaving exposed the glossy brown shell
enclosing the ripe, sweet kernel of the nut.

If this answer to your letter reads like a sermon, pardon one who is
interested in young people, and who, well remembering when she was
young herself, would fain hold out a helping hand to those who are
stumbling on in the path she trod in years gone by.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THAT SPOILED CHILD.

I was the other day one of many passengers in a railroad train in
which a small girl of four or five years of age was making a journey,
accompanied by her mother and an aunt. The child was beautiful, with a
mass of golden curls. Her velvet coat and the felt hat trimmed
elaborately with ostrich plumes were faultless in their style; her
behavior would compare unfavorably with the manners of a young
Comanche Indian. She insisted upon standing in the centre of the
aisle, where she effectually blocked all passage, and, as the train
was going rapidly, ran a great risk of being thrown violently against
the seats. When remonstrated with by her guardians, she slapped her
aunt full in the face, pulled herself free from her mother's
restraining grasp, and, in a frenzy of rage, threw herself down right
across the aisle. There she lay for a full half hour. When her mother
would have raised her to her feet she uttered shriek after shriek,
until her fellow-travelers' ears rang. After this triumph of young
America over the rule and command of tyrannizing mamma, the innocent
babe was allowed to remain prostrate in her chosen resting-place,
while brakemen, conductor and passengers stepped gingerly over the
recumbent form. She varied the monotony of the situation by occasional
wrathful kicks in the direction of her mother or at some would-be
passer-by.

"It is best to let sleeping dogs lie," sighed the mother of this
prodigy to her sister. "When she gets one of these attacks (and she
has them quite often) I just leave her alone until she becomes
ashamed of it. She ca