d good morals. Such
restraints are far more effective than the staid lessons of some old,
wrinkled duenna of a school-mistress, whose failure to find a
sweetheart in girlhood, or a husband in youthful womanhood, has soured
her toward every man, and filled her with hatred for the happiness she
witnesses in wedded life, and which is ever present all around her. Her
warnings are in violation of nature. She has forgotten she was ever
young or inspired with the feelings and hopes of youth. Men are
monsters, and marriage a hell upon earth. Girls will not believe this,
and will get married. How much better, then, that they should
cultivate, in association, the generous and natural feelings of the
heart, and during the period allotted by nature for the growth of the
feelings natural to the human bosom, as well as to the growth of the
person and mind, than to be told what they should be by one
disappointed of all the fruits of them, and hating the world because
she is! It is the mother who should form the sentiments and direct the
conduct of daughters, and in their teachings should never forget that
nature is teaching also. Let their lessons always teach the proper
indulgences of nature, as well as the proper and prudent restraints to
the natural feelings of the human heart, and so deport themselves
toward their daughters from infancy as to win their confidence and
affection. The daughters, when properly trained, will always come with
their little complaints in childhood, and seek consolation, leaning
upon the parent's knee, and, with solicitude, look up into the parental
face for sympathy and advice. Home-teaching and home-training makes the
proper woman. When this is properly attended to, there needs no
boarding-school or female-college finish, which too frequently uproots
every virtuous principle implanted by the careful and affectionate
teaching of pious, gentle, and intelligent mothers. But few mothers,
who are themselves properly trained, forget nature in the training and
education of their daughters; and a truly natural woman is a blessing
to society and a crown of glory to her husband. I mean by a natural
training a knowledge of herself, as well as a knowledge of the offices
of life and the domestic duties of home. Every woman in her girlhood
should learn from her mother the mission and destinies of woman, as
well as what is due to society, to their families, to themselves, and
to God. The woman who enters life with a kno