you do that?'--'Now _I_
should advise you to do thus and so.'--And these comments and criticisms
and advices are accompanied with an energy of feeling that makes it
rather difficult to disregard them.

"Now it is no matter how dear and how good our friends may be, if they
abridge our liberty and fetter the free exercise of our life, it is
inevitable that we shall come to enjoying ourselves much better where
they are not than where they are; and one of the reasons why brothers
and sisters or children so often diverge from the family-circle in the
choice of confidants is, that extraneous friends are bound by certain
laws of delicacy not to push inquiries, criticisms, or advice too far.

"Parents would do well to remember in time when their children have
grown up into independent human beings, and use with a wise moderation
those advisory and admonitory powers with which they guided their
earlier days. Let us give everybody a right to live his own life, as far
as possible, and avoid imposing our own personalities on another.

"If I were to picture a perfect family, it should be a union of people
of individual and marked character, who through love have come to a
perfect appreciation of each other, and who so wisely understand
themselves and one another that each may move freely along his or her
own track without jar or jostle,--a family where affection is always
sympathetic and receptive, but never inquisitive,--where all personal
delicacies are respected,--and where there is a sense of privacy and
seclusion in following one's own course, unchallenged by the
watchfulness of others, yet withal a sense of society and support in a
knowledge of the kind dispositions and interpretations of all around.

"In treating of family discourtesies, I have avoided speaking, of those
which come from ill-temper and brute selfishness, because these are sins
more than mistakes. An angry person is generally impolite; and where
contention and ill-will are, there can be no courtesy. What I have
mentioned are rather the lackings of good and often admirable people,
who merely need to consider in their family-life a little more of
whatsoever things are lovely. With such the mere admission of anything
to be pursued as a duty secures the purpose; only in their somewhat
earnest pursuit of the substantials of life they drop and pass by the
little things that give it sweetness and perfume. To such a word is
enough, and that word is said."

A