tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-139146342008-02-09T22:18:21.387-08:00Group Therapy - Advice Columns From the VaultJoelBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1124942060618026922005-08-25T20:50:00.000-07:002005-08-24T20:57:29.770-07:00THE CHARMING WOMAN<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >ATTRIBUTES THAT MAKE HER ADMIRED</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >by Beatrice Fairfax</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">The Mansfield News</span>, Sunday, April 2, 1920</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Two letters lie before me, both of which express the wish I've an idea most women would make if the wishing-fairy came their way:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">"How can I make myself liked? What can I do to be magnetic? Is it possible to acquire charm?"</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Discouragingly enough we're generally told that charm and magnetism are things which you just have--or haven't. But I wonder if it's as hopeless as this sounds.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Health, strong vitality, a poised and un-irritating mind--all these make for charm, and most of those who long to acquire these things may do so in our day of good physicians, splendid psychologists and chances in the educational field. But I haven't space here to give all present the high road to mental equilibrium, energy and healthy sanity of body and soul.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">No, instead I'm going to tell you about the woman who is acclaimed by all who know her as "perfectly charming." Maybe you'll get some hints from a study of Elsie.</span>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1124941731619488802005-08-25T20:46:00.000-07:002005-08-24T20:55:03.740-07:00<span style="font-family:arial;"><br />She is only moderately good looking. But she is scrupulously, fragrantly clean. Her skin is as clear as a magnolia. Her clothes are simple and dainty. Her freshness and sweetness make it a joy to sit near her.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Elsie radiates cleanliness, neatness, fastidiousness and the daintiness we all admire and can acquire if we choose. Her teeth are in fine condition, her hair is brushed to a gloss, her hands are soft and clean in spite of the fact that each day they do a good day's work.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Elsie is interested in others. She attends to what folks say and reacts to it intelligently with sympathy and humor.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The glow of her physical cleanliness is repeated in her mental alertness.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Elsie works hard and stands ready to earn her way through the world. She doesn't fancy that life owes her a living or that folks owe her attention. She is ready to earn whatever she gets and to give all she can to others.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">She talks intelligently and listens with intentness and interest. She makes humorous--but never cutting and cruelly "smart"--comments on what she sees going on around her.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And I believe that her charm is due to the simple things I have just told you about.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Anyone who is not diseased in body and mind can emulate her.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Anyone who is not lazy can be clean and sweet and radiant and aglow mentally and spiritually. Anyone who will stop whining and whimpering and get to work can make something--and something likable--of the self, to earn its way to be lovable in order to win love.</span>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1123136180564111882005-08-04T23:15:00.000-07:002005-08-03T23:17:25.713-07:00ADVICE TO THE LOVELORN<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >BY BEATRICE FAIRFAX</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">The Perry Daily Chief</span>, Saturday, November 20, 1920</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >LOVE VS. FRIENDSHIP</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Dear Miss Fairfax:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >For the past year I've been in love with a young man who unfortunately does not love me but who has deep friendly feelings for me. He is in love with a girl who does not return his affections. He has found out my feelings and written me a beautiful letter explaining all and saying he will never see me again. Now, I want to know whether it is better to abide by his decision or to try and go on being just friends, for I hate the idea of never seeing him again. His friendship means so much to me.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">CONSTANT READER</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I think you will do yourself a real kindness if you abide by the young man's decision and make no effort to see him. You think you want to see him because of friendship, but probably you are hoping against hope that he will grow to care for you. It is best to accept the inevitable and to turn your attention elsewhere. Besides, how--without humbling yourself and making yourself a nuisance to the man--can you force him to see you if he doesn't want to?</span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family:arial;">___________________________________</span><br /></div>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1123136090178962322005-08-04T23:14:00.000-07:002005-08-03T23:17:01.653-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" ><br />BROTHER OR FIANCEE?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Dear Miss Fairfax:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >I have been going about with a man about on year, during which time he has told me time and time again that he loves me. About six months ago he started to give me money to put away for him with the intention of having his own home. Now, this young man has a brother who holds a good position and is rather careless with his money, and, therefore, always looks to my friend to help him out. It has put him back with his savings a great deal, as I had hoped he would save quite a bit, and I myself save quite a bit, and I myself have tried not to make our evenings every expensive. His brother gets a good salary and could get along very well without the aid of his brother if he only looked at things in a different way, but thinks that as long as he has someone to get money from, why worry?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >My friend told me that he would work some place at night to make up the difference. He has said this so often, but has not yet made an attempt to get nightwork for a few nights during the week. What I would like to know is this: Does a man who says he loves a girl enough to have her become his wife, realize that is it impossible to serve two at the same time?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">PUZZLED</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Your fiance is yielding to a deplorable weakness. He isn't doing his brother any real kindness when he encourages a lazy and extravagant strain. The thing to do for the sake of all concerned is to take a firm stand with the brother who is showing a willingness to be a mere parasite. It may cause a temporary cooling, but it will encourage independence and make for final happiness.</span>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1121930050255124482005-07-21T00:13:00.000-07:002005-07-21T00:17:58.436-07:00HOW TO CHOOSE A HUSBAND<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >by Beatrix Fairfax</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Mansfield News</span>, Thursday, March 29, 1917</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Nowadays we women folk choose our careers with a great deal of sanity and after much consideration. I wonder if we bring as much consideration to the greatest careers of all--Wifehood and Motherhood.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Most of us know that the future of the race depends on us, but we seem to think that knowing accomplishes our whole duty and the practical realization is of no importance whatever.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Because we are clever stenographers whose fingers click with expert precision and speed over the keys of typewriters, and whose eyes and minds read back our own notes accurately, do we conclude that those same agile fingers are fit to interpret Chopin or Brahms and the eyes can be guaranteed to work out the intricacies of Liszt and read his notes? Oh, no; we say to ourselves: "Hurray! I'm an expert stenographer. I have found my niche and my career and the things for which I am suited. I shall make the most of it."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And having brought intelligence to the selection of our work, we go ahead and make the most of it.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But when it comes to choosing the life work of wifehood and motherhood, we are all likely to rush in and marry a pair of broad shoulders topped by a pleasing face and a broad forehead which houses no thought in tune with our own.</span>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1121929980754693532005-07-21T00:11:00.000-07:002005-07-21T00:14:46.436-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" ><br />Don't Trust Appearances</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Eyes and heart and mind have to work together if a woman expects her marriage to be complete. The fact that a man tells a joke well doesn't mean that he is going to be an interesting life companion. The individual who leads you beautifully and without jar through a waltz may not be as successful when you join forces with him and try walking the path of life. And the blue-eyed Apollo who delights your eyes may revolt your whole nature when you come into close contact with him.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The man who gambles or drinks to excess, and who has gambled or drunk to excess through ten or fifteen years of his life is not going to reform just because a woman asks. If he never had the mental stamina or the moral force to pull himself up short, no woman ought to take on the job of making him over new, unless he first prove his fitness to be her life partner by making himself over new.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The philanderer, the maker of light love, the man without respect for woman or child, is attainted, and that taint is bound to poison the life of the woman who gives herself into his keeping.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">No woman ought to marry a man unless she is sure that he is physically as well as morally fit to be the father of her children.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">In choosing a husband, health, strong character, high purpose and steady aim are of paramount importance. Kindness and congeniality make the life partner a being with whom one can live happily. Ability to make money is far more important than the possession of it. A man who does not drink, who does not loiter in the pathway of giddy pleasures and who has the reliability and common sense to work along practically in a practical world is going to be a far better provider than the ease-loving inheritor of a fortune.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Unselfishness, honor, temperance in all things, capability of tender affection--all of these are far more likely to guarantee happiness than an ability to murmur sweet nothings.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Not a Path of Thrills</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Life is not a matter of thrills. It is instead an affair of prosaic, everyday details. To live side by side with a man day in and day out is not going to be a very comfortable matter if he is a "Great Lover" who cannot take care of you, and an Adonis who makes no effort to be honest with you, or a weakling you cannot respect.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Gentleness and strength, firmness of character and willingness to listen to advice; a strong sense of direction and a keen perception of the rights of others make a Real Man. Be sure that the man you marry is a Real Man--not a lovable, fascinating unreliable boy.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Insure the rights of your children and of your own future by marrying none but a man who brings you clean, untainted health. Unselfishness--which covers kindness and fairness and tenderness and a sturdy willingness to remember that you are in individual with a personality of your own--is the next great need of the woman who is choosing her mate.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And your life partner must interest you, he must be congenial, he must think along lines which stimulate you to thought, and must enjoy the fillip your ideas give to his imagination.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">If such a man be temperate, reliable and honest, and have well-balanced common sense, marriage with him will bring you deep joy, ever-widening happiness and glimpses of life's greatest heights.</span>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1121307794038414582005-07-14T19:22:00.000-07:002005-07-13T19:26:25.666-07:00ADVICE TO LOVERS<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >MISS BEATRICE FAIRFAX ANSWERS APPEALS FOR HELP</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >And She Often Finds Some Curious Problems To Deal With In the Case of Hearts That Do Not Always Beat as One</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">The Fort Wayne Evening Sentinel</span>, Wednesday, June 7, 1899</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >WE ARE EVERY UNLIKE</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >I am a young lady who has been keeping company with a young gentleman for over a year, and I think a great deal of him, and I know he does of me, for he has asked me to marry him. But we are not alike at all in our dispositions, he having a very mean disposition at times, and he is very jealous of me, so that leaves me very much undecided what to do about marrying him, so kindly advise me what to do.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">A VERY DISCONTENTED GIRL</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">My dear girl, it depend entirely on yourself how much you can stand and how deeply you love the young man. Men who put their worst foot forward before marriage seldom withdraw it afterward. On the other hand, the absolutely unselfish devotion of a woman will sometimes work miracles with the most perfect types of selfishness. </span><br /><div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial;">___________________________________<br /></div>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1121307721426856562005-07-14T19:20:00.000-07:002005-07-13T19:26:49.636-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" ><br />DOES SHE LOVE ME OR THE MUSIC?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Dear Madam--I am a young man 20 years of age, and I have the pleasure of being very talented in [the] line of music. I play seven instruments and am quite a good singer. I am acquainted with a young lady whom I love dearly, and sometimes she asks me to her house to see her, but she always wants me to bring my music with me. Now, what I want to know is if she loves me or the music.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">ANXIOUS</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Have you ever heard that love is a beautiful harmony? When you sing and play for the young woman you love, it expresses her own feelings and is another bond of union between you.</span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family:arial;">___________________________________</span><br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >HAS WRITTEN MANY THINGS ABOUT HER LOVE</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Dear Madam--I have been keeping company with a young lady for three years. During that time she has written and said many things about her love for me, which I believed was always true. Last Sunday she sent me word that she had "decided for her and I to be strangers in the future." I know no reason for this action, unless some person (my enemy) has told her falsehoods about me and she believed it and took the action already stated. I wrote a letter to her, but got no answer as yet, which I could get in a day if she wanted to send one, as she had many times before. She is a person that is very easily lead and hasty for the minute. She is always asking about me from my comrades, but will not tell them in the case of her action. I always treated her up to the handle in every respect. I love her very dearly and would like to be on speaking terms again. So will you please tell me how to go about it, and would it be proper for me to speak to her first or let her speak first?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">PARKER A. LEPONTE</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">As long as she has said that she wishes to be a stranger to you in the future, why not take her at he word? That is the best way to make her change her mind, if she is going to change at all.</span>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1120712410119183022005-07-07T21:58:00.000-07:002005-07-06T22:03:35.330-07:00EVERYONE IS LONELY<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >IT'S A TROUBLE YOU CAN'T ESCAPE</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >By Beatrice Fairfax</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">The Mansfield News</span>, Sunday, July 4, 1920</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">There's no way out of it. You simply can't get away from it. Everyone is lonely, and people have to find a sort of "companionship" in that fact and to get a whimsical "misery loves company" satisfaction out the fact they aren't alone in their loneliness.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">At least five per cent of the letters which come from me every day are from boys and girls (men and women, too) who long for friendship--for companionship, for someone who will "understand." Loneliness exists out on the farm twelve miles from anywhere, and it also thrives in the midst of thronging humanity. It comes less from not knowing folks in general than it does from not knowing the one "right" person.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">When statisticians are making up lists of the why and wherefore of falling in love, they don't lay enough stress on loneliness. Everyone longs for someone to whom he can talk frankly and freely--someone to whom he can confide his hopes and aspirations and fears, someone who will feel that his interests are all important, someone who will console him in grief and share his joys. And not having that "someone" is loneliness.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Of course, with our conscious minds we all want to be happy here and now. We hate to be left too much to ourselves. Most of us hate to go to the movies alone night after night--or always to run out to lunch without a companion. It looks queer. Unpopular, unattractive. No one wants to be set down as a "pill." Everyone is self-conscious and dreads being eyed askance by his mates.<br /><br /></span>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1120712312819673552005-07-07T21:57:00.000-07:002005-07-06T21:58:32.826-07:00<span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">What Loneliness Does</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial;">This fear is part and parcel of the thing we call "loneliness." It drives folks who don't meet the individuals they'd all like to know to the sad old device of putting up with what they can get. It accounts for the unfortunate straying of many a sweet, wholesome boy or girl into bad company.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial;">Being alone seems a tragedy to so many of us. But, as a matter of fact, being alone offers most of life's opportunities.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial;">Big things are created in solitude. A clever newspaper man may dash off a fine article in the midst of a busy, thronging "city room." But a great book is written in cloistered quiet. All of us must get away by ourselves and search our souls if we want to do anything worth while.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial;">The man who has a big job on at the office may stay after hours and get it out in the quiet of the empty rooms where he can do the day's routine, but where he can't concentrate sufficiently to produce the bigger and better thing he's after. Or he may dope it out while walking through the park, or in the solitude of his room, or even while riding the subway. But he can't dig into the innermost recesses of his mind unless he actually invites "loneliness."</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">Using Your Time</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial;">With congenial companions at hand and all sorts of things to woo human nature to the lure of amusing itself and having a good time, work doesn't get done.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial;">Loneliness means a solitude of spirit which isn't easy to bear. But it offers the opportunity to work toward the big things each of us wants from life. It gives time to read and think. It means growth. It opens the doors to progress.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial;">Suppose you never have anything to do evenings. Or Sundays. Dreadful times those for youth to be alone when all the world seems happily arranged in groups of two. Of course at last half the world is invisible because [it is] sitting in its hall bedroom grieving over its "unique" loneliness.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial;">How about using two of the evenings at classes at the "Y," or some of the many other places which offer youth a chance to obtain some of the world's vast store of wisdom? How about a gymnasium? Or an art school? Or some University Extension lectures? Or a course in good reading? Or sewing? Or studying up for the job two jumps ahead of you?</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial;">Why not use your loneliness? Instead of grieving over it, figure that it offers opportunity for growth and progress. Life is short and crowded with duties. There are so many chances crowding about folks that they'd be dizzy if they realized them all.</span>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1120094070663333952005-06-30T18:13:00.000-07:002005-06-29T18:25:08.490-07:00ADVICE TO LOVERS<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >by Beatrice Fairfax</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">The Perry Daily Chief</span>, Saturday, May 22, 1920</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >MEET HIM OF COURSE</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Dear Miss Fairfax: I am twenty two and about to be married. My sweetheart's home is in a Western State, where he was sent upon his discharge from the army. Now he has asked me to meet him at the station upon his arrival here, and I have consented. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >My sister and I have quarrelled about this. She says it would not be proper for a girl to meet a man, and that he can ask his way of anybody if he doesn't find it. Now, this is not his reason for asking me to meet him but just because he would like me to do so. My sister says I would be running after him if I did this. What shall I do?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">E.L.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Your sister's ideas of "propriety" haven't a spark of kindness as their basis. I should say that for you to fail to meet your fiance when he reaches the city from a far away town would be completely improper. Besides--and this is more important--it would be unkind and lacking in the feeling I hope you have for the man you're going to marry.</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">___________________________________<br /></div>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1120094166016337452005-06-30T17:15:00.000-07:002005-06-29T18:19:05.330-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" ><br />MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Dear Miss Fairfax: I have been going about steady with a young man five years my senior. Recently he was called away on business and during his absence I became acquainted with another young man who calls to see me. I have come to love him very dearly, but he only regards me as a friend.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Yesterday the first man returned and asked me to marry him. I did not give him my answer yet, as I am greatly puzzled. What shall I do?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I.F.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Of course you mustn't marry without love. But it is equally important not to let a mere infatuation come between you and the man for whom you must have felt some regard, else why would you have gone about with him for so long? Too many of us want the unattainable merely because it is beyond our reach. If we could have it, the fictitious value it gets from being out of our grasp might vanish.</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">___________________________________<br /></div>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1120094298548087992005-06-30T16:17:00.000-07:002005-06-29T18:18:18.550-07:00<span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A CASE OF FOLLY</span></span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;">Dear Miss Fairfax: I am eighteen and deeply in love with a man thirty-five. He is also deeply in love with me. Do you think I should accept his attentions, as he is married but doesn't live with his wife? Do you think he is too old for me? He has no children and expects to secure a divorce shortly. Would you advise me?</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial;">YOUTHFUL</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial;">"Youthful Folly" is an excellent signature--and it tells that down in the bottom of your heart you know as well as I that answer to your questions. The man is not divorced--therefore not in a position to talk to you of marriage. You are a child in years as in experience. He is mature in every way. Decidedly too old for you, I should say.</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">___________________________________<br /></div>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1120094402182672242005-06-30T15:19:00.000-07:002005-06-29T18:22:09.336-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" ><br />DECIDEDLY DANGEROUS</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Dear Miss Fairfax: Is it proper for an unmarried girl to go out with a married man who has had matrimonial difficulties, but who lives with and supports his wife? The girl concerned contends that under the circumstances, it is perfectly proper, but I do not agree with her.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">PERPLEXED</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">If the girl has any regard for her own reputation, she will cut short her acquaintance with this man. She is simply running a risk, while he has nothing to lose.<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;">___________________________________<br /></div>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1120094456702170862005-06-30T14:20:00.000-07:002005-06-29T18:22:43.046-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" ><br />NOT FOND ENOUGH TO WED</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Dear Miss Fairfax: I am a girl nineteen, who has been going about with a young man eight years my senior. We have known each other for almost a year. He claims he is madly in love with me. Now, Miss Fairfax, I think I am too young to pledge myself to any one man. I am fond of him, but do not love him. I want to keep his friendship. I have told him my sentiments. He says he cannot come only as a friend because he loves me too much.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">PERPLEXED</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">There is only one answer to your question. If you do not love him, why should you devote your time to him exclusively? If he cannot treat you as a friend, then it would seem his best plan would be not to see you.</span>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1119649543271732302005-06-23T14:44:00.000-07:002005-06-26T12:18:24.436-07:00TALKING TO MEN<span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: arial;">SOME GIRLS FIND IT MOST DIFFICULT</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: arial;">Beatrice Fairfax Advises Young Women to Read and Have Something Worth While to Discuss</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">By Beatrice Fairfax</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: arial;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Mansfield News</span>, Sunday, April 4, 1920</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">"They always talk who never think," said a writer of by-gone days. Yet most girls imagine that empty-pated chatterboxes are more charming by far than serious-minded, dignified women who speak only when they have something to say.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Daily I received letters from girls who sadly confess that when they find themselves alone with the man they most want to impress they find themselves tongue-tied.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">"What am I to do?" writes Maizie. "I simply can't find myself alone with a man. In a crowd, I'm often the life of the party. I can sing and dance and play and tell an amusing story and keep everything going. So I generally make friends at a large gathering and get a number of invitations. But if any of them are to go to a show or spend an evening alone with a fellow I always queer myself before the evening is over. For I simply can't think of one word to say. I know I got a reputation for being entertaining at the party, and I go half crazy knowing I won't be able to live up to it. What am I to do? Can't you suggest some way I can find topics to discuss with men when I'm alone with them?"</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><br /><?php require_once('http://www.dearanyone.com/ads/square-ad.php'); ?>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1119652798271841842005-06-23T12:02:00.000-07:002005-06-24T15:40:28.730-07:00<span style="font-family:arial;"><br />There's the obvious suggestion that the same care-free, unselfish-conscious [sic] spirit which makes Maizie so entertaining at a party might serve her in good stead when she's alone with men. There aren't any rules about how to be entertaining. Conversation isn't a set thing to work out by rule. It ought instead to be a spontaneous interchange of ideas between people who have something to say to each other, and in the saying stimulate each other to further conversation.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Maizie probably thinks that talking to a man alone ought to be romantic adventure, most stimulating to him and the girl who furnishes the emotional excitement of the occasion by her words. When she's alone with a man she feels that as a tribute to her womanhood he ought to be personal, romantic, chivalrous—altogether different from the man she sees in a crowd or out among men. And when he isn't she feels that she's a social failure and doesn't know how to talk to men.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">It's a tragic blunder for girls to fancy that [the] only relationship possible between them and men is a "man and woman one." There is no reason why girls and boys should spend their time together in remembering that they are girls and boys. The difference between the sexes are great enough without our constantly adding our mile of self-conscious posturing to the sum.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Why can't a girl talk to a man about the things she'd like to talk to a woman? His work and hers, the events of the day in the history of the world, the happenings that have befallen people they both know, the little incidents that mark out the day, each so different from the all the days that go before.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Why can't a girl draw a man out to talk of things that interest him—his ambitions, his hopes, his plans for the future?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Most people like to talk of themselves. All people admire a sympathetic listener. And all people are lonely and in search of interesting and understanding companionship.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The girl who encourages a man to talk is more likely to seem far more interesting than the one who does all the chattering.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Why then should a girl rack her brains for conversational material? She can talk of the things should would discuss in a crowd, she can bring up questions she'd talk over with another woman. She can set her self to finding out what are the things a man longs in the soul of him to confide to someone who will care.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">There are people and things and ideas to discuss. In the order of our culture and brains we turn to these three fields of discussion. And ideas, the highest form of conversational material, are all about us in our changing world.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The papers inform everyone who will read of the events of the day. With editorial opinion and comment, with the weeklies and monthlies offering material for thought and discussion, with the city all about us teeming with incident, how can anyone who opens eyes and mind and heart lack something to discuss?</span>bluevespaboytag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1119585501360588482005-06-16T20:57:00.001-07:002005-06-23T20:59:45.326-07:00<span style="font-style:italic;">Dear Madam:I am a married woman, considered nice-looking, age twenty-eight, have been married eleven years, have always had to work hard, and now my husband's business is very good. He makes on an average of $20 to $25 a week, or maybe $30. He claims that $11 a week is enough to pay $12 a month rent, clothe and feed my little girl and boy, my husband and myself. I cannot possibly do it, so I have made up my mind to let him keep the children in clothes and pay their board, and I will strike out for myself. I think a man does not deserve a wife that is so close with his money. Can he do anything if I take the children away and leave the home to him, or what am I entitled to? He is very abusive sometimes, too. The last time he abused me, he deliberately took his foot and tripped me, sending me full length and weight on one side. <br /><br />ETHEL MAY</span><br /><br />Your case is a very hard one, Ethel May, but I would certainly not advise you to "strike out" if it necessitates leaving your children, and there are so few things open to a woman with children. I cannot imagine anything more desolate for them than to be put out to board while their father saved his money and their mother "struck out" for herself. The law will oblige your husband to support you in accordance with his means. Why don't you have a serious talk with him and tell him that it is impossible for you to get along on the allowance he makes you. It is just possible that the hundredth talk on the subject might find him reasonable if you talk quietly and don't "nag." <br /><br />And you might be able to earn a little money in your own home by taking in plain sewing or making preserves, or doing whatever you can do best. If you leave him, he can divorce you for desertion. In the meantime, your children ought to be a great comfort to you if you are the right sort of a little woman, and I know you are. They ought to compensate for a great deal.<br /><br /><hr width="70%"><br>Joeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1119585467007325312005-06-16T20:57:00.000-07:002005-06-24T13:42:43.720-07:00Advice to Lovers<p><b>by Beatrice Fairfax</b></p> <p>New York Evening Journal, 1898<br /><br /></p> <span style="font-style: italic;">Dear Madam: I am a young lady who is very much in love with a young man who is now at present a soldier with the First Regiment, Company K at San Francisco. Before leaving, he promised to write to me, pretending he cared for me. He never fulfilled his promise, and since he left, I have found out that while he was going with me, he was at the same time going with another girl. I would like to ask your advice what I should do. Write to him and tell him what I think of him or let him pass out of my mind forever?<br /><br />POUGHKEEPSIE FORSAKEN</span><br /><br />My Dear Girl: To write a letter requires some mental effort. To send it requires a two-cent stamp. Believe me, your fickle soldier is worth neither expenditure. Let him pass out of your mind without flattering his vanity by reproaches.<br /><br /><hr width="70%">Joeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1119584883278532292005-06-16T20:47:00.000-07:002005-06-26T12:17:16.000-07:00<span style="font-style: italic;">Dear Madam: I have been keeping company with a young man for some time, and I love him. He seemed to love me in return, but he told me some time ago that he did not care to keep steady company, and left me.... I asked him the last time if he thought we would ever go together again, and he said he could not tell, as at the present time, he did not want any girl, but still he likes to go out with me. I keep company with a young man who loves me, and I like him, but I do not love him as much as I do the other.... I would accept my first lover tomorrow. If I were to be married, and were at the altar with the second one, and could see the chance to marry the first, I would back out and return with my old love, if I knew he would be true to me.<br /><br />LIDA MAY</span><br /><br />Lida May, you sentimental girls who lack pride and self-respect and call that lack "love" are rapidly destroying my sympathy with the victims of the tender passion.<br /><br />Have you any ground whatever for believing that a man who has played fast and loose with your feelings as your admirer would be a faithful or loving husband? Why don't you summon a little common sense to your aid? The man has insulted, rebuffed and wounded you. Could you possibly put yourself again in a position where he could again hurt you? A broken heart--I dare say you think you are suffering from that--is a trifling complaint compared to a bad husband. Do be brave and self-respecting, and dismiss this creature from your mind and life.<br /><br /><hr width="70%"><br><br /><?php require_once('http://www.dearanyone.com/ads/square-ad.php'); ?>Joeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13914634.post-1119584477155545092005-06-16T20:40:00.000-07:002005-06-23T20:56:55.970-07:00<span style="font-style: italic;">Dear Madam: I read that you will advise young persons concerning their love affairs. I want your advice. I came from Ireland six months ago. A young man whom I have known since I was a little girl asked me to promise to marry him. . . . It was breaking my heart to come away, and I loved him dearly when he asked me. So I said yes. He is to come over as soon as he gets enough money. When I reached this country I met another young man at my married sister's. I have been to some picnics with him, and I see him often, and I think I have fallen in love with him. It will kill my friend in Ireland if I am not true to him, and it will kill me if I have to be. Please advise me.<br /><br />NORA</span><br /><br />My Dear Nora:<br /><br />I am glad that you are, although apparently fickle, at least conscientious enough to be troubled by your fickleness. That is a sign that your heart is pretty nearly in the right place....<br /><br />Don't try to decide anything now. Don't see the new young man much. Avoid the occasions of inconstancy. Remember that as an honest girl, you cannot encourage him while you are pledged to another. And wait. Grow accustomed to your new surroundings and your new life. Then act as your heart directs. And be sure of this, Nora dear. It will not kill the young man if you should fail him. Death is not so easily accomplished.<br /><br /><hr width="70%"><br>Joel