m sure this is something quite out of the common run. Of course
she knows how to rub the shoulders and loins, and has learnt the art
of shampooing?"

The master of the house bristled up at this and answered--

"I may be very poor, but I've not fallen so low as to let my daughter
learn shampooing."

The learned man, smiling, replied, "I think you are making a mistake
when you put yourself in a rage. No matter whether her family be rich
or poor, when a woman is performing her duties in her husband's house,
she must look upon her husband's parents as her own. If her honoured
father-in-law or mother-in-law fall ill, her being able to plait
flowers and paint pictures and make tea will be of no use in the
sick-room. To shampoo her parents-in-law, and nurse them
affectionately, without employing either shampooer or servant-maid, is
the right path of a daughter-in-law. Do you mean to say that your
daughter has not yet learnt shampooing, an art which is essential to
her following the right path of a wife? That is what I meant to ask
just now. So useful a study is very important."

At this the master of the house was ashamed, and blushing made many
apologies, as I have heard. Certainly, the harp and guitar are very
good things in their way; but to attend to nursing their parents is
the right road of children. Lay this story to heart, and consider
attentively where the right road lies. People who live near haunts of
pleasure become at last so fond of pleasure, that they teach their
daughters nothing but how to play on the harp and guitar, and train
them up in the manners and ways of singing-girls, but teach them next
to nothing of their duties as daughters; and then very often they
escape from their parents' watchfulness, and elope. Nor is this the
fault of the girls themselves, but the fault of the education which
they have received from their parents. I do not mean to say that the
harp and guitar, and songs and dramas, are useless things. If you
consider them attentively, all our songs incite to virtue and condemn
vice. In the song called "The Four Sleeves," for instance, there is
the passage, "If people knew beforehand all the misery that it brings,
there would be less going out with young ladies, to look at the
flowers at night." Please give your attention to this piece of poetry.
This is the meaning of it:--When a young man and a young lady set up a
flirtation without the consent of their parents, they think that it
will