urely as to treat
them reasonably.

7. TIGHT LACING.--Great harm is often done to maidens for want of
knowledge in them, or wisdom and care in their parents. The extremes
of fashions are very prone to violate not only taste, but physiology.
Such cases are tight lacing, low necked dresses, thin shoes, heavy
skirts. And yet, if the ladies only knew, the most attractive costumes
are not the extremes of fashion, but those which conform to fashion
enough to avoid oddity, which preserve decorum and healthfulness,
whether or no; and here is the great secret of successful dress--vary
fashion so as to suit the style of the individual.

8. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE.--Last of all, parental care in the use
of whatever influence can be exerted in the matter of courtship and
marriage. Maidens, as well as youths, must, after all, choose for
themselves. It is their own lives which they take in their hands
as they enter the marriage state, and not their parents; and as the
consequences affect them primarily it is the plainest justice that
with the responsibility should be joined the right of choice. The
parental influence, then, must be indirect and advisory. Indirect,
through the whole bringing up of their daughter; for if they have
trained her aright, she will be incapable of enduring a fool, still
more a knave.

9. A YOUNG WOMAN AND A YOUNG MAN HAD BETTER NOT BE ALONE TOGETHER VERY
MUCH UNTIL THEY ARE MARRIED.--This will be found to prevent a good
many troubles. It is not meant to imply that either sex, or any member
of it, is worse than another, or bad at all, or anything but human. It
is simply the prescription of a safe general rule. It is no more an
imputation than the rule that people had better not be left without
oversight in presence of large sums of other folks' money. The close
personal proximity of the sexes is greatly undesirable before
marriage. Kisses and caresses are most properly the monopoly of wives.
Such indulgences have a direct and powerful physiological effect. Nay,
they often lead to the most fatal results.

10. IGNORANCE BEFORE MARRIAGE.--At some time before marriage those
who are to enter into it ought to be made acquainted with some of
the plainest common-sense limitations which should govern their new
relations to each other. Ignorance in such matters has caused an
infinite amount of disgust, pain and unhappiness. It is not necessary
to specify particulars here; see other portions of this work.

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