my father remark, that he had, more than once, known a
right-minded girl, who seemed to have been first taught of heaven, and
afterward supported in her Christian course under almost every human
disadvantage; who boldly, but meekly, maintained her own principles,
under all the hourly temptations and oppositions of a worldly and
irreligious family, and who had given the best evidence of her piety
toward God, by her patient forbearance toward her erring friends. Such
women had made admirable wives when they were afterward transplanted
into families where their virtues were understood, and their piety
cherished. While, on the other hand, he had known others, who,
accustomed from childhood to the sober habits of family religion, under
pious but injudicious parents, had fallen in mechanically with the
domestic practices, without having ever been instructed in Christian
principles, or having ever manifested any religious tendencies. The
implantation of a new principle never having been inculcated, the
religious habit has degenerated into a mere form, the parents acting as
if they thought that religion must come by nature or infection in a
religious family. These girls, having never had their own hearts
impressed, nor their own characters distinctly considered, nor
individually cultivated, but being taken out as a portion from the mass,
have afterward taken the cast and color of any society into which they
have happened to be thrown; and they who before had lived religiously
with the religious, have afterward assimilated with the gay and
dissipated, when thus thrown into their company, as cordially as if they
had never been habituated to better things.

At dinner there appeared two pretty-looking young ladies, daughters of
my friend, who had been some time a widower. I placed myself between
them for the purpose of prying a little into their minds, while the rest
of the company were conversing on indifferent subjects. Having formerly
heard this gentleman's deceased wife extolled as the mirror of managers,
and the arrangements of his table highly commended, I was surprised to
see it so ill-appointed, and every thing wearing marks of palpable
inelegance. Though no epicure, I could not forbear observing that many
of the dishes were out of season, ill-chosen, and ill-dressed.

While I was puzzling my head for a solution, I recollected that I had
lately read in a most respectable periodical work, a paper (composed, I
believe, howev