those you talk to?

School gives you tremendous opportunities of adding to the kindliness and
nice-mindedness of the world; for there you talk with a large number who,
like yourself, are not yet made, and who are, therefore, more coloured by
the person they talk to than older people would be.

There are people in the world who never hear unkind gossip or vulgar
jokes, for no one would think of saying such things to them. I know girls
who would never have such things said--who would never get a letter
written to them that was not of a nice tone--because, instinctively, their
friends would feel such things out of harmony with them.

When girls are silly, or spiteful, or not quite nice in what they say to
you, it pays _you_ a bad compliment; do not in your own mind merely
condemn _them_. They would not say it to you if they felt you above talk
of that kind. You may be above it in your own mind and may feel that your
home surroundings are on a higher level than such talk; but either you
have not had the courage to show your colours, or else you are like that
in your heart, and they know it by instinct.

See to it that you keep at your best: for the danger of school is the
temptation to follow a multitude to do, not evil, but folly.

Many, from indolence or thoughtlessness, or from yielding to the bad bit
in them, join in silly school talk, silly mysteries, giggling, criticizing
other people, boasting about home, loud, rough ways of talking, slang,
cliques and exclusive friendships (every one of which is underbred, as
well as silly or unkind), and are yet, three-quarters of them, fit for
something better,--at home they _would_ be better, and at school they