and to remain by her side when the incident is over would look like presuming on what he had done, as though it gave him a right to her continued acknowledgments. This would be ungentlemanly.

On girls making advances.

The risk to one’s good name.

The method can produce little good.

At the same time, these occurrences are sometimes deliberately planned by girls and women with a direct view to scraping acquaintance with young men. It is scarcely necessary to say that girls who stoop to this kind of manœuvring are hardly ever gentlewomen. Members of good families have been known to do such things in the wild exuberance of youth and high spirits, but they cannot hope to retain the respect of those who know them when they deliberately lower themselves in such ways as these. Picking up promiscuous male acquaintances is a practice fraught with danger. It cannot be denied that girls of the lower middle classes are often prone to it; and there are thousands of young men who have no feminine belongings in the great towns and cities where they live, and who are found responsive to this indiscriminating mode of making acquaintances. But they must often hesitate before choosing as wife a girl who shows so little discretion as to walk and talk with young men of whom she knows nothing beyond what they choose to tell her.

Seaside “Flirtations.”

Should the man become attached.

Should he be unable to reciprocate.

The seaside season is prolific in these chance acquaintanceships—“flirtations,” as they may perhaps be called. Bicycling is well known to favour them. But as they are far removed from the practices of the class of society to which belong those gentlemen of whom this little book treats, they may be dismissed with a few words of advice. Should any young man become acquainted with a girl in this manner, let him show his innate chivalry by treating her in every way as he would wish his own sister to be treated in similar circumstances. If he becomes attached to her, let him first find out all about her that he possibly can, and should what he hears be encouraging, then let him ask her to introduce him to her family as a suitor for her hand. Should the girl fall in love with him, let him protect her against herself like a preux chevalier, like an honourable and high-minded English gentleman. If he feels that he cannot reciprocate her sentiment, he should give up seeing her. Should she, as some girls of the kind have been known to do, pursue him with letters making appointments, she makes his task of renunciation a difficult one, but he should fulfil it nevertheless.

“Her ultimate welfare.”

It is difficult in this way. Suppose a girl writes to a young man: “Meet me at the tea-rooms, No. 440, Bond Street, to-morrow afternoon.” There is no chance of replying in time to prevent her going there, and to absent himself would be to administer a severe snub to a girl whom he likes very well, and who has flattered his self-love in many ways during their acquaintanceship. What can he do? It is a point that he must decide for himself, taking all the circumstances into consideration, and not forgetting to regard her ultimate welfare in the matter at least as much as his own actual wishes.

The view of the ordinary young man.

The manly young man does his own wooing.

This may seem to some young men a very “high-falutin”’ view to take of such a small matter as meeting a young woman and having tea together. Most of them, finding that a girl was growing fond of them,