h zest to every homefelt joy. And should He call you to those
trials, disappointments, and sorrows, of which, when they come on a
household, woman must drink the dregs of the cup, how will you sustain
them, without the love of God in your heart? Make Him your early trust,
and He will gild the darkest cloud, with a ray of that mercy, which
falls never so welcome as on the stricken heart.

"Earth may forsake--oh! happy to have given,
The unbroken heart's first fragance unto Heaven."

Chapter V.

SOCIETY.

Dangers on entering Society. Of cherishing a Passion for it.
Sensitiveness to Public Opinion. Dress; Miss Sedgwick's view of
it; connected with virtues. Mrs. Hancock. Exposure of Health.
Affectation; of extreme sensibility; of insensibility.
Conversation for Effect. Entertainments. Nominal Morality. Two
guards, Moral Independence, and Ingenuousness. Dangers in regard
to your own Sex. Envy. The Swiss sisters. Jealousy. Detraction.
Ridicule. Flattery. Cultivate Gentleness. Dr. Bowring in regard to
Ladies in the East. Kind Feelings. "The art of being Pleased."
Good Sense. Good Taste. Amusements. A holy Purpose.

We spoke, in the preceding chapter, of the paramount demands of home on
the youthful female. This was represented as the central luminary of
life. We are led naturally, in this place, to note those influences
adverse to domestic piety. There are planets, in the moral heaven of
woman, whose orbits are so eccentric, that their motions are of fearful
import to her heart. When she enters society, an equal among elders, it
is a trying exigency; a crisis then occurs in her character. Her
temptations are numerous, while her moral energy is usually less decided
than at subsequent periods.

Among the perils appertaining to this stage, of a general description,
I name, first,

That of cherishing a Passion for Society, to the neglect of domestic
duty. To one issuing from an ordinary light, into the broad glare of the
sun, there is danger that the vision may suffer. How often has she, who
might have graced her home through all coming years, had she retained
her first love of it, failed and fallen from this height, by being
overpowered by the dazzling charms of a round of new pleasures. In vain
has a brother, distant from home, entreated that she continue a sisterly
correspondence. To no purpose has the gentle voice of a mother been at
length raised against her dissipating course. The