be
detected in the acorn. Has God endowed her with personal charms?
Prudence would apprise her, that "if the body be a paradise, it needs a
cherub to guard the spirit within it."

Especially, in this connection, would I warn my female friends against
the vice of Detraction. There are those, who find pleasure in repeating
what they hear of the sins of a neighbor. If a misfortune befall
another, it is made food for calumny. Her adversity is made the occasion
of intruding on her most private concerns, and exposing them to the
world. Compassion is expressed, and yet in a tone that betrays a secret
exultation. Faults are descried and magnified; no sympathy is felt for
the sufferer, but a vulgar curiosity bruits the ill-natured rumor, and
many hearts must hence bleed in their unseen solitude.

How easily may a few words, spoken concerning an enemy, or a rival,
kindle a village into flames. Recklessness may prompt speeches, full of
mistatements, wounding the fame of another, which a life may be
insufficient entirely to correct. The young woman must set herself
resolutely in opposition to this practice. If she once form the habit of
selecting the errors of others of her sex for her usual topic of
discourse, time may make it like the change of the leopard's spots, if
she ever thoroughly reform. A light word, a breath, may so scatter the
Sybil's leaves, that no human power can again reduce them to order.

A most dangerous weapon, when employed by one of this sex against a
sister, is Ridicule. Not only does it rob her who indulges it of the
rich joys of admiration, but it poisons the depths of her own spirit,
and breaks the peace of her associates. Few are they, who have not some
foible or personal defect, on which this vice may fix itself. One is an
object of taunts for her ignorance; another for a plain face; a third
for an impediment in her speech; and how many suffer this infliction for
some article of dress proscribed by that mistress called fashion. Too
often are we reminded of the fabulous Melusina, to-day, a theme of
wonder, for her grace and eloquence, to-morrow, a loathsome reptile,
with a tongue full of scorpion stings. How does every attraction we feel
toward her, who was framed with powers of speech to obey the highest
law of God, wither, as flax in the flames, when the lips thus breathe
desolation around them. The eye of the eagle is there piercing all
depths by its intelligence; but the soaring wing of that bird i