come of little children knowing the things
which belong to maturity? Is any girl sweeter or even safer for
knowing about the under-current of filth below the glittering crust of
gilded society? The Chinese quarter is a fact, yet is there a mother
who would like her daughter to visit it? But if it is not fit to
visit, it is not fit to talk about. No one is ever the better for
knowing of evil, unless they can do something to remedy it.

A good mother will shield her children from the consequences of their
own ignorance, physical and moral, and she will just as carefully
shield them from knowledge which is hurtful because premature,--just
as fruit green and unripe is hurtful. And no guardianship is too close
for this end. Mothers will generally admit this fact as regards the
children of other people, but as to their own brood they cradle
themselves in a generous belief of its incorruptibility. Their girls
would never do as other girls do; and their girls are consequently
permitted a license which they would think dangerous for any but their
own daughters. Then some day there is a paragraph in one of the
papers, and the men blame the man, and the women blame the girl, and
all the time the mother is probably the guiltiest of the parties. She
has stimulated her daughter's imagination in childhood, she has left
her to the choice of her companions in youth, she has trusted her
sacred duty to circumstances, she has indulged a vague hope concerning
the honor and virtue of humanity, and thus satisfied her indolent
neglect. But what right had she to expect that men would revere the
treasure she herself left unguarded?

For there has been no special race made for this era; what Adam,
Jacob, Samson, and David were, what Eve, Sarah, Rachel, Jael, and
Bathsheba were, the men and women of to-day are, in all their
essentials. Circumstances only have made them to differ; and nature
laughs at circumstances, and goes back at any crisis to her first
principles. Indeed, the good mother of to-day, instead of relaxing,
must increase her care over her children. For never since the world
began has youth been so catered to, never has it been surrounded by so
many open temptations, never so much flattered, and yet at the same
time never have the reins of discipline been so far relaxed. Now the
spirit we evoke we must control, or else we must become its slave.
If we are no longer to reverence the gray hairs of age; if young men
are to drive the c