linen, and put it away tenderly to sleep its last
sleep in the venerable cedar chest, where my grandfather's huge
knee-buckles, and my great-grandmother's yellow brocaded silk-dress,
with its waist the length of my little finger, and the sleeves as
wide as a balloon. Gentlemen, permit me one parting paragraph,
before I write 'finis' on this matter of education, and 'hereafter
for ever hold my peace.' Be it distinctly understood, 'by these
presents,' that if that child Regina grows up a blue-stocking, or a
metempsychosist, a scientist or a freedom-shrieker, a professor of
physics or a practitioner of physic, judge of a court or mayor of a
city, biologist, sociologist, heathen or heretic, it will be no work
or wish of mine; for to each and all of these threatened, progressive
abominations, I, Elise Lindsay, do hold up clean hands, and cry,
Avaunt!"

"I thought my sister had long since learned that borrowing trouble
necessitated the payment of usurious interest? Just now our little
girl carries no gorgon's head; let her alone. The most imperatively
demanded change in our system of female training, is the addition of
a few years in which to work. American girls are turned out upon
society when they should be beginning their apprenticeship under
their mothers' eyes in all household arts and sciences; and they are
wives and mothers before they are able physically, mentally, or
morally to appreciate the sacred, solemn responsibilities that inhere
in such positions. If our girls pursued methodically all the branches
of a liberal and classical education, including domestic economy,
until they were at least twenty, how much misery would be averted!
how many more really elegant interesting women would be added to the
charm of society, usefulness to country, happiness and sanctity of
home! Had I means to bestow in such enterprises, I should
like to endow some institution, and stipulate for a chair of
household-arts-and-sciences-and-home-duties; and Regina should not go
into general society until she had graduated therein."

"Not another word of conspiracy against my little maid's peace! Lean
forward a little, Peyton, and look at her yonder, coming along the
rose-walk. See how the pigeons follow her. She has been gathering
raspberries, and I promised she should make all she could pick into
jelly for poor old Tobitha Meggs. How pure and fair she looks in her
white dress! Dear little thing! Sometimes I am wicked enough to wish
she