Usually, the number of papers on a given day should not exceed two. Sometimes, owing to the light or easily divisible nature of the theme for the day, three papers, of fifteen or twenty minutes each, may be assigned.
For the discussion that should follow the paper, or papers, it is the custom generally in women’s clubs to appoint a leader. The selection of leaders for conversation should be carefully made. Not every woman who writes a good paper talks well, though it is possibly within her power to do so if she makes sufficient effort. The leader of a conversation should be one who has been tried in general discussion and found successful. Upon the leader depends the guidance of the talk. If it drifts into foolish and unprofitable channels, it is her business to call it back to better issues, yet to do so with what shall not seem a meddling or arbitrary touch. The cultivation of the gift of speech is, in the minds of many competent judges, the best thing offered us by the woman’s club. Only a skilled person should undertake leadership in a discussion, but the floor of the club is a school where all may learn something of the art. To learn to think quickly, to express one’s self standing and facing an audience,—this is an accomplishment worth having, and one which many a club woman owes to years of progressive effort in a woman’s club.
Members should be taken into a club because they have qualifications which will add to the pleasure and profit of the membership at large. One should not vote for or against a candidate for purely personal reasons. Many kind people, who are yet ignorant of the proper law for limiting the membership of a club, consider it an act of enmity to blackball a candidate for membership whether she be fitted for that membership or not. This is a mistaken and a sentimental theory. It is indeed disagreeable to blackball, but it is sometimes necessary. Those who propose members for a club should feel the responsibility of such proposals and thus, as far as lies within their power, avoid for the membership, or committee controlling this matter, the unpleasant necessity of refusing or blackballing a candidate.
The new member should be received with courtesy by the older members of the club. Her sponsors or guarantors should see to it that proper introductions, if introductions be necessary, are made. For several months, at least, after her admission to the club, the new member’s part should be a negative rather than a positive one. It is an unwritten law in the United States Senate that the new senator does not speak on any matter of importance for a year after his election. Exactly so, modesty demands that the new member in a woman’s club, unless specially requested, keep silent till custom has established her place in the organization. When the proper occasion arises for her to speak or to read, she begins her performance as others do theirs, by formally addressing the president and members of the club thus: “Madam president and women of the club.”
