A FEW HINTS FOR “FEMININITY”
 The following “loud” hints are respectfully
submitted by one of the sex: - Don’t make a confidante of the first
interesting young lady you meet. A woman can’t keep a secret any
more than a sieve can hold water; and ten to one she’ll tell the
whole story to the sister of a nice young man of her acquaintance. Then
you can imagine the consequences! Don’t sit down to your crotchet-work
of embroidery unless you have first mended that home in your stocking.
No use crowding it under the heel of your shoe. Rags, like murder, will
out; and they speak with terribly loud voices and at inconvenient seasons,
sometimes. Don’t undertake to write skim-milk poetry, whenever you
feel little indisposed towards enthusiasm. Go and do a kind action, or
speak an encouraging word to somebody, it the “poetic” impulse
must have vent. Depend upon it, you’ll be better satisfied afterwards.
Don’t pretend to be angry because gentlemen have the audacity to
look at you when you promenade the streets in your best bonnet. What do
you go there for, if not to be seen? The more you affect indignation,
the more the offending wretches won’t believe it. Don’t pay
two or three pounds for the aforesaid bonnet, and then complain that “pa”
is in such narrow circumstances that you cannot afford to give a shilling
in charity. Don’t keep a gentleman waiting half an hour, when he
calls, while you put on lace and ribbons, and arrange curls; he isn’t
a fool, whatever you may think on the subject, and will probably form
his own ideas upon your original appearance. Don’t run and hide
like a frightened rabbit when a gentleman puts his head into the room
where you are sweeping or dusting. If there is anything to be ashamed
of in the business why do you do it? Don’t proclaim to the world
that you can’t exist without six Paris bonnets in the year, and
that life would be a burden without an opera-box and diamonds, and then
wonder that the young men “sheer off.” And, above all, when
some one does propose, don’t say no when you mean yes. He may take
you at your word! If you follow all these precepts, you may one day succeed
in getting married, and that you know, is the summit of all earthly ambition!
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