Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1916 — Boys Often Spend Too Much Money on Girls [ARTICLE]

Boys Often Spend Too Much Money on Girls

By LAURA JEAN LIBBEY

(Copyright, 1916.) Pleasures are like poppies spread— You seize the flower, its bloom is shed! Or like the snowflake in the river— A moment white, then melts forever.

The most foolish course a young man who works hard to earn his

money can .pursue is to lavish his earnings on girls, with the hope of making himself popular with them. He could make no greater mistake, for the very girls who accept his ice cream and bonbons, theater tickets, etc., are the ones who give him the name of spendthrift. They infer that he cannot keep what he earns, and they might as well

have the benefit of it as anyone. If by springtime he has not been able to save enough to buy a new suit of clothes—even inexpensive ones —the girls on whom he lavished his money will be the first to comment on his shabbiness, and decline to be seen in his company.

Popularity—that is, the honest kind —cannot be bought. It is given spontaneously and for sterling worth. A sensible young man measures his garment according to his cloth, as the old saying goes. That is, he lets a crowd of jolly girls who expect to be “treated” every time they happen to meet a man, severely alone. That is a sufficient and dignified rebuke to girls who suggest they’d like a soda, etc. The majority of men are too sensible to buy popularity. They would rather just one nice girl would admire them, one who would have her dinner before they started out for a stroll of an evening or to the theater, and would refuse to gorge herself after the show at his expense. The greatest fear many a mother feels is that her boy is spending too

much money on girls. It sets the pace for reckless living and has brought many a well-meaning youth to ruin. A girl who accepts the attentions of a young man who she knows earns his money by toil should study the situation before she accepts an invitation from him that calls for a carriage if she wears her pretty, filmy party dress. She should know that he could afford such extravagance only now and then. If she really has his interest at heart she will wear a dress that cannot spoil or that laundering will make as good as new, and either take a car to their destination or walk if the distance is not too great and the weather is fine.

A man can well understand such a girl will make a good, prudent wife. His earnings would be safe in her keeping. If an employer finds that a young man has not been able to lay bv a dollar of his earnings for a twelvemonth, his declaration that he had spent it all on girls would bring him sharp criticism, and the statement would sound almost unbelievable.

In looking backward, reckoning all the money spent uselessly on girls, no wonder the squanderer grows bitterly angry with himself. It has been a case of a fool and his money. It does not take some men very long to learn their little lesson. Others are years in finding out that the saving, industrious man, who knows how to take care of his bank roll has far outdistanced him even in the opinion of the frivolous girls. Money is hard to earn. It should not be allowed to sift through a man’s pocket like sands in the hourglass. It is a man’s reputation for prudent-* ly saving which brings him respect, admiration and popularity in a community.