255

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE WEDDING.

Folly of preparing an elaborate trousseau--The way of one
sensible girl--The wedding gifts--Bridal tours--The realities
of wedded life. 267

PREFACE.

During a number of years it has been my privilege to be the confidante
and counsellor of a large number of young women of various stations in
life and in all parts of the United States.

These girls have talked freely with me concerning their plans,
aspirations, fears and personal problems. It has been a great
revelation to me to note with what unanimity they ask certain
questions concerning conduct--queries which perhaps might astonish the
mothers of those same girls, as they, doubtless, take it for granted
that their daughters intuitively understand these fundamental laws of
propriety.

The truth is that many girls who have been taught in the "ologies" of
the schools, who have been trained in the conventionalities of
society, have been left to pick up as they may their ideas upon
personal conduct, and, coming face to face with puzzling problems, are
at a loss, and perhaps are led into wrong ways of thinking and
questionable ways of doing because no one has foreseen their dilemma
and warned them how to meet it.

The subjects treated in this little book are discussed because every
one of them has been the substance of a query propounded by some girl
otherwise intelligent and well informed. They have been treated
plainly and simply because they purport to be the frank conferences of
a mother and daughter, between whom there can be no need of hesitation
in dealing frankly with any question bearing on the life, health or
happiness of the girl. There is therefore no need of apology; the book
is its own excuse for being, the queries of the young women demand
honest answers.

Life will be safer for the girl who understands her own nature and
reverences her womanhood, who realizes her responsibility towards the
human race and conducts herself in accordance with that realization.

Life will be nobler and purer in its possession and its transmission,
if, from childhood onward to old age, the thought has been held that
"Life is a gift of God and is divine," and its physical is no less
sacred than its mental or moral manifestation; if it has been
understood that the foundations of character are laid in the habits
formed in youth, and that a noble girlhood a