wider and deeper
her education goes, the happier and more useful she is; and yet can we
deny that a very wide education is likely to repel rather than attract
even highly educated men?

My own solution of the difficulty would be to give a girl the best
education within reach, but to lay such stress on warm-heartedness and
sweet temper that her intellectual attainments would not stand out
prominently and concentrate all attention on them. I should do this, not
chiefly as a matter of policy, but because it seems to me the only way
to preserve the true balance between emotion and thought essential to an
ideal character.

It may be said that all the qualities I have discussed are rather
superficial, and that it is only when two people have high aims in
common that they are capable of the best kind of love on which alone a
true marriage can be based. And that is right. All education ought to
tend to make a girl noble, and no motive of marriage ought to be held up
before her. But I cannot think it is idle for her parents and friends to
try to make her attractive as well as good, and I cannot think a man is
to be blamed who chooses between two high-minded women the one who has
graces as well as gifts.

Another subject which it may be thought ought not to be left untouched
in any volume dealing with women is that of the suffrage. I must frankly
own that though I have thought much upon this subject I have not been
able to come to positive conclusions about it. I am glad for all the
freedom women have gained. I wish to see them entirely free. I think a
woman needs to be free in order to reach the highest nobility; but it is
inward freedom which we most need, and that is independent of
circumstances. Epictetus, a slave, won as complete inward freedom as
Marcus Aurelius, an emperor.

I see so many arguments on both sides of the question that I am always
vacillating between them, and it would therefore be impossible for me to
treat the matter here. All I can say is, that the longer I live the more
I am convinced that it is personal character which most helps the world
forward, and I think our hearty allegiance to the truth which we clearly
see will in the end teach us new truth.

I began this little book in the hope of saying some helpful words to
girls. I have found it necessary to think of them as having grown into
women. I cannot take leave of them without fancying them as they will be
in old age.

Charles Dudley Warne