The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-02-10
SECTION
ADVICE TO THE
 LOVELORN
"ho Occupies a Unique Position in the Writing World as an Author.
 ity on the Problems of Life.
By BEATRICE FAIRFAX.

Recently great number of young girls have written to me asking for suggestions about entertaining their callers. It doesn't sound like very serious problem to us grown-ups. But memory recalls a picture of myself at sixteen sitting stiffly across a big o1d-fashioned living room trying to say something to the boy who had come to show me the medal had won at a recent track meet.
 I liked the boy. His eighteeu-year- old blond cleanness stirred something in my young heart. His mother was my mothers friend. I was allowed to entertain him alone in the bis. living room. But instead of staying until the ten-thirty permitted by a beautiful understanding mother, he started to go at nine. And if moth CT had not come to the rescue he would have gone and the friendship for which I longed would have end ed then and therein the frost of my youthful awkwardness.t
 So I know that eager, terrified youth is likely to defeat itself through it's own ignorance of the SO c1al charm and friendIiness that seems so much part of our very selves to us grown-ups.
 The boy who comes to call is shy.
 
 hostess to do is to make him feel at nome. Not by fussing over him and by forcing pillows behind his back and giggling conversation on his stumbling mind. All my blessed mother had to do to make Rex feel at home was to say:
 T hear you won medal at the track meet last week, Rex. Isn't that splendid? Will you show it to me?"
 Sbn boy to talk to him without shouting across space. And looking at the medal with close and sympathetic i'm terest, she saw he had received it for the pole vault. At once she ask ed him about jumping and vaulting. Her questions opened Q door in the boys mind. Her sympathy and in terest made him sure of himself.
 And there lies the whole art of entertaining.
 It's not hard to play a little de- tective game. It's not difficult for a sympathetic girl who will stop thinking about herself to find out something about a boys interests If she can't do it by some simple meth cd of deduction, she can frankly tell her visitor about something that in terests her. and then as frankly ask if he has a fad or a particular in- terest.
 Athletics the motion pictures, the things that are going on in the out side world, work. any general topic is likely to prove a field for particu- lar interest. f~-
 A girl who can play and sing may either do a bit of entertaining on her own part. or persuade her young caller to join in singing Nothing helps folks get together better than singing some of the pretty old bal lads most of us know. Singing is such a natural expression of feeling that it removes all stiffness from Music and rhythm are natural and primitive. Almost all of us have a love for song in common
 The girl who really wants to be will make it her business to stop thinking about herself and the impression she is making and try to find out what her visitor is inter ested in, what will prove the key to his thoughts.
 It can be done. And the girl who does it need never fear that she's @ bore. For the bore is always the person who talks about herself when the other person longs for a chance to hold forth about what appeals to him.
 Don't "show off," young hostess But give you caller a chance to shine.