I believe young girls should be
treated in a manner something similar to this. Mothers should indulge
them in an innocent liberty, but should never lose sight of them.

To guard the tender minds of children from what is wrong, much care
should be taken to employ them in agreeable and useful matters. They
should not be loaded with food they cannot relish. Milk suited to
babies should be administered to them not strong meat which may so
disgust them, that when they arrive at an age when it would be proper
nourishment, they will not so much as taste it. Every day they should
be obliged to read a little in some good book, spend some time in
prayer, which must be suited rather to stir the affections, than for
meditation. Oh, were this method of education pursued, how speedily
would many irregularities cease! These daughters becoming mothers,
would educate their children as they themselves had been educated.

Parents should also avoid showing the smallest partiality in the
treatment of their children. It begets a secret jealousy and hatred
among them, which frequently augments with time, and even continues
until death. How often do we see some children the idols of the house,
behaving like absolute tyrants, treating their brothers and sisters as
so many slaves according to the example of father and mother. And it
happens many times, that the favorite proves a scourge to the parents
while the poor despised and hated one becomes their consolation and
support.

My mother was very defective in the education of her children. She
suffered me whole days from her presence in company with the servants,
whose conversation and example were particularly hurtful to one of my
disposition. My mother's heart seemed wholly centered in my brother. I
was scarcely ever favored with the smallest instance of her tenderness
or affection. I therefore voluntarily absented myself from her. It is
true, my brother was more amiable than I but the excess of her fondness
for him, made her blind even to my outward good qualities. It served
only to discover my faults, which would have been trifling had proper
care been taken of me.

CHAPTER 3

My father who loved me tenderly and seeing how little my education was
attended to sent me to a convent of the Ursulines. I was near seven
years old. In this house were two half sisters of mine, the one by my
father, the other by my mother. My father placed me under his
daughter's care, a person of the gr