Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/163

Rh would be unnecessary rigor. If any peculiar circumstance make you desirous of distancing a gentleman, you can take the flowers without wearing them.”

In regard to invitations from young men to go with them to places of public amusement, we think, as a general rule, they should be declined. And this for several reasons. We do not believe any young lady should appear at a ball, the theatre, or concert, except in company with her parents, brother, cousin, or some very intimate friend of the family, unless she be under engagement of marriage, and then her lover becomes her legitimate protector and companion. In the first place, to accept of such attentions would be for a young lady to lay herself under an obligation that might, at some after period, be very embarrassing, or so interfere with her feelings of independence, as to make it difficult for her to act towards an individual, who had thus sought to gratify her, as both feeling and judgment dictated; and in the second place, her thus appearing in public with a young man known not to be an intimate friend of the family, would naturally give rise to the belief that she entertained for him a preference that did not exist, and thus place her in a false light in the eyes of her acquaintances; and this would more