person whose opinion we fear may be in equal dread of ours, and
that the person to whom we are looking for a precedent may, at that very
time, be looking to us.

In short, Mrs. A., if you think that you could spend your money more
like a Christian than in laying it out on a fashionable party, go
forward and do it, and twenty others, whose supposed opinion you fear,
will be glad of your example for a precedent. And, Mrs. B., if you do
think it would be better for your children to observe early hours, and
form simple habits, than to dress and dance, and give and go to juvenile
balls, carry out your opinion in practice, and many an anxious mother,
who is of the same opinion, will quote your example as her shield and
defence.

And for you, young ladies, let us pray you to reflect--_individuality of
character_, maintained with womanly sweetness, is an irresistible grace
and adornment. Have some principles of taste for yourself, and do not
adopt every fashion of dress that is in vogue, whether it suits you or
not--whether it is becoming or not--but, without a startling variation
from general form, let your dress show something of your own taste and
opinions. Have some principles of right and wrong for yourself, and do
not do every thing that every one else does, _because_ every one else
does it.

Nothing is more tedious than a circle of young ladies who have got by
rote a certain set of phrases and opinions--all admiring in the same
terms the same things, and detesting in like terms certain others--with
anxious solicitude each dressing, thinking, and acting, one as much like
another as is possible. A genuine original opinion, even though it were
so heretical as to assert that Jenny Lind is a little lower than the
angels, or that Shakspeare is rather dull reading, would be better than
such a universal Dead Sea of acquiescence.

These remarks have borne reference to the female sex principally,
because they are the dependent, the acquiescent sex--from nature, and
habit, and position, most exposed to be swayed by opinion--and yet, too,
in a certain very wide department they are the lawgivers and
custom-makers of society. If, amid the multiplied schools, whose
advertisements now throng our papers, purporting to teach girls every
thing, both ancient and modern, high and low, from playing on the harp
and working pincushions, up to civil engineering, surveying, and
navigation, there were any which could teach them to be women--to