Now, when a girl is not much accustomed to society (especially to men's
society), it sometimes turns her head, and she gets an idea that any joke
about a man is amusing. I will not say that this sort of a joke is like a
servant, for a well-brought-up servant puts many a young lady to shame by
her nice-mindedness. Young ladies' academies are supposed to be full of
that sort of thing--for which there is no word but vulgar--and when such
girls leave such academies to go home for good, they are always in holes
and corners either with a man, or with another girl talking about one. A
man does not respect that kind of girl--though he will go just as far with
her as she will let him--and he will tell it again at his club, and
probably to his sisters. If _she_ does not mind about her dignity, why
should _he_? There is hardly a man living who would not make game of the
advances of the girl who admires him, just as there is hardly a man living
who would speak to others of the girl he loves. Unluckily, every idiotic
girl (who is silly about him) thinks she is the one he cares for, and
never realizes how she is "giving herself away!"

And the worst of it is, that the girl is not only lowering herself, she is
lowering a man's standard of Woman in general. You, each one of you, help
to decide whether your brothers and every man you meet shall have a high
or a low standard about women. I assure you, when I think of girls I have
known of (and heard of from men), I wonder that men have any respect for
women at all.

We shall never know how much of Dante's nobleness was due to his having
once known a girl in Florence, who never was in any specially close
relationship to him. He met her at the gatherings of Florentine ladies,
where she must have heard his songs, but the most close personal
intercourse they had was one day when they passed each other in the