How To Talk

I wish the young people who propose to read any of these papers to understand to whom they are addressed. My friend, Frederic Ingham, has a nephew, who went to New York on a visit, and while there occupied himself in buying "travel-presents" for his brothers and sisters at home. His funds ran low; and at last he found that he had still three presents to buy and only thirty-four cents with which to buy them. He made the requisite calculation as to how much he should have for each,--looked in at Ball and Black's, and at Tiffany's, priced an amethyst necklace, which he thought Clara would like, and a set of cameos for Fanfan, and found them beyond his reach. He then tried at a nice little toy-shop there is a little below the Fifth Avenue House, on the west, where a "clever" woman and a good-natured girl keep the shop, and, having there made one or two vain endeavors to suit himself, asked the good-natured girl if she had not "got anything a fellow could buy for about eleven cents." She found him first one article, then another, and then another. Wat bought them all, and had one cent in his pocket when he came home.

In much the same way these several articles of mine have been waiting in the bottom of my inkstand and the front of my head for seven or nine years, without finding precisely the right audience or circle of readers. I explained to Mr. Fields--the amiable Sheik of the amiable tribe who prepare the "Young Folks" for the young folks--that I had six articles all ready to write, but that they were meant for girls say from thirteen to seventeen, and boys say from fourteen to nineteen. I explained that girls and boys of this age never read the "Atlantic," O no, not by any means! And I supposed that they never read the "Young Folks," O no, not by any means! I explained that I could not preach them as sermons, because many of the children at church were too young, and a few of the grown people were too old. That I was, therefore, detailing them in conversation to such of my young friends as chose to hear. On which the Sheik was so good as to propose to provide for me, as it were, a special opportunity, which I now use. We jointly explain to the older boys and girls, who rate 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,