INFLUENCE OF FEMALE SOCIETY.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 138, 22 May 1884, Page 2

INFLUENCE OF FEMALE SOCIETY.

It is bettor for you to pass an evening onoe or twice in a lady’s drawing-room, even though the conversation is slow, and you know the girl’s song by heart, than in a club, tavern, or the pit of a theatre. All amusements of youth to which virtuous women are not admitted, rely on it, are deleterious in their nature. All mon who avoid female society have dull perceptions, and are stupid, or have gross tastes, and revolt against what is pure. Your club swaggerers, who are sucking the butts of billiard cues all night, call female society insipid. Poetry is insipid to a yokel; beauty has no charm for a blind man;

music does not please a poor beast who does not know one tune from another; and as a true epicure is hardly ever tired of water sanchy and brown bread and butter, I protest I can sit for a whole night talking to a wellregulated, kindly woman, about her girl coming out, or her boy at Eton, and like the evening’s entertainment. One of the great benefits a man may derive from women’s society is, that he is bound to be respectful to them. The habit is of great good to your moral man, depend upon it. Our education makes of us the most eminently selfish men in the world. We fight for ourselves, we push for ourselves, we yawn for ourselves, we light our pipes, and say we don’t go out; we prefer ourselves and our ease; and the greatest good that comes to a man from a woman’s society is, that he has to think of somebody besides himself, somebody to whom he is bound to be constantly attentive and respectful.