A Gloomy Word

Of course there are chaperons and chaperons! But it must be said that the very word has a repellent school-teacher-ish sound. One pictures instinctively a humorless tyrant whose "correct" manner plainly reveals her true purpose, which is to take the joy out of life. That she can be—and often is—a perfectly human and sympathetic person, whose unselfish desire is merely to smooth the path of one who is the darling of her heart, in nothing alters the feeling of gloom that settles upon the spirit of youth at the mention of the very word "chaperon."