between the ages of thirteen and nineteen, that these essays are
exclusively for them.

I had once the honor--on the day after Lee's surrender--to address the
girls of the 12th Street School in New York. "Shall I call you 'girls' or
'young ladies'?" said I. "Call us girls, call us girls," was the unanimous
answer. I heard it with great pleasure; for I took it as a nearly certain
sign that these three hundred young people were growing up to be true
women,--which is to say, ladies of the very highest tone.

"Why did I think so?" Because at the age of fifteen, sixteen, and
seventeen they took pleasure in calling things by their right names.

So far, then, I trust we understand each other, before any one begins to
read these little hints of mine, drawn from forty-five years of very quiet
listening to good talkers; which are, however, nothing more than hints.



How To Talk.


Here is a letter from my nephew Tom, a spirited, modest boy of seventeen,
who is a student of the Scientific School at New Limerick. He is at home
with his mother for an eight weeks' vacation; and the very first evening
of his return he went round with her to the Vandermeyers', where was a
little gathering of some thirty or forty people,--most of them, as he
confesses, his old schoolmates, a few of them older than himself. But poor
Tom was mortified, and thinks he was disgraced, because he did not have
anything to say, could not say it if he had, and, in short, because he