uld be allowed to
change love or respect to disgust.

It sometimes happens, I know, that two persons are, in this respect,
pretty equally yoked. But what of that? It only makes each party
twofold more the child of misfortune than before. I have known a couple
of intelligent persons who would sit with their 'feet in the ashes,' as
it were, all day, to read some new and bewitching book, forgetting
every want of the body; perhaps even forgetting that they _had_ bodies.
Were they therefore happy, or likely to be so?

Drawing, music, embroidery, (and I might mention half a dozen other
things of the same class) where they do not exclude the more useful and
solid matters, may justly be regarded as appropriate branches of female
education; and in some circumstances and conditions of life,
indispensable. Music,--vocal and instrumental--and drawing, to a
certain extent, seem to me desirable in all. As for dancing, I do not
feel quite competent to decide. As the world is, however, I am almost
disposed to reject it altogether. At any rate, if a young lady is
accomplished in every other respect, you need not seriously regret that
she has not attended to dancing, especially as it is conducted in most
of our schools.

CHAPTER VII.

Criminal Behavior.

SECTION I. _Inconstancy and Seduction._

In nineteen cases out of twenty, of illicit conduct, there is perhaps,
no seduction at all; the passion, the absence of virtue, and the crime,
being all mutual. But there are cases of a very different description.
Where a young man goes coolly and deliberately to work, first to gain
and rivet the affections of a young lady, then to take advantage of
those affections to accomplish that which he knows must be her ruin,
and plunge her into misery for life;--when a young man does this, I say
he must be either a selfish and unfeeling brute, unworthy of the name
of man, or he must have a heart little inferior, in point of obduracy,
to that of the murderer. Let young women, however, be aware; let them
be _well_ aware, that few, indeed, are the cases in which this apology
can possibly avail them. Their character is not solely theirs, but
belongs, in part, to their family and kindred. They may, in the case
contemplated, be objects of compassion with the world; but what
contrition, what repentance, what remorse, what that even the tenderest
benevolence can suggest, is to heal the wounded hearts of humbled,
disgraced, but still affectionate p