out, are the very ones
who remain single, or, what is worse, make unhappy matches.

Very young girls are apt to suppose, from what they observe in older
ones, that there is some peculiar manner to be put on in talking to
gentlemen, and not knowing exactly what it is, they are embarrassed and
reserved; others observe certain airs and looks, used by their elders in
this intercourse, and try to imitate them as a necessary part of company
behavior, and so become affected, and lose that first of
charms--simplicity, naturalness. To such I would say, your companions
are in error; it requires no peculiar manner, nothing to be put on, in
order to converse with gentlemen any more than with ladies; and the more
pure and elevated your sentiments are, and the better cultivated your
intellect is, the easier will you find it to converse pleasantly with
all. If, however, you happen to have no facility in expressing yourself,
and you find it very difficult to converse with persons whom you do not
know well, you can still be an intelligent and agreeable listener, and
you can show by your ready smile of sympathy that you would be sociable
if you could. There is no reason in the world why any one, who is not
unhappy, should sit in the midst of gay companions with a face so solemn
and unmoved, that she should seem not to belong to the company; that she
should look so glum and forbidding that strangers should feel repulsed,
and her best friends disappointed. If you cannot look entertained and
pleasant, you had better stay away, for politeness requires some
expression of sympathy in the countenance, as much as a civil answer on
the tongue.

Never condescend to use any little arts or manoeuvres to secure a
pleasant beau at a party, or during an excursion; remember that a woman
must always wait to be chosen, and "not unsought be won," even for an
hour. When you are so fortunate as to be attended by the most agreeable
gentleman present, do not make any effort to keep him entirely to
yourself; that flatters him too much, and exposes you to be joked about.

How strange a thing it is, in the constitution of English and American
society, that the subject, of all others the most important and the most
delicate, should be that on which every body is most given to joke and
banter their friends! Much mischief has been done by this coarse
interference of the world, in what ought to be the most private and
sacred of our earthly concerns; and every refin