uide her conduct in every such emergency by some established
principles, and with a clear vision of causes and results? How many such
questions come up for settlement in the course of twelve hours, only a
woman who has had for a day the charge of two or three young children
can know; and how often has she, in the course of half an hour, either
from the result of her decision, or from her own reflection, become
convinced that she has done exactly the thing which she ought not to
have done! This would not be so often the case if our girls were really
educated.

We hold a general in the army responsible for the mistakes of execution
made under his orders, and if he commit many, we assert him to be
incompetent, half-educated, and demand that he be superseded.

We put a girl who has never had the chance for any study or
comprehension of the only thought which could give a rational ground for
such decisions, at the head of a family, and when, either in devotion to
interests which she practically thinks of greater importance, or in
despair at her own want of success, fretted and worried beyond the
power of endurance, she fails in nervous health and gives up the care of
her children to ignorant nurses, we wonder that American children are so
unruly. We sow the wind and we reap the whirlwind, but the sowing was
done long ago in the narrow and unfinished education which we gave to
our girls, now the mothers.

Politeness does not consist in any outside mannerisms, nor is it simply
kindness. It consists, as a wiser than I has said, in treating every
person as if she were what she might be, instead of what she actually
is. A person tells us what we know not to be true. We do not contradict
her, which would be treating her as if she intended to tell a lie,
though we may be convinced that such was the actual case, but we treat
her as if she intended to be a scrupulously truthful person. We speak
not to _her_ then, but to a non-existing ideal of her, when we ask her
politely whether she may not be mistaken, or when we do not answer at
all, thereby assuming that her statement was correct. Or a
self-important salesman insists, very impolitely, because he thereby
implies that we know nothing of what we desire, that the piece of goods
which we are examining is of charming colors, tastefully combined, and
is in fact the very thing which we most need. If we answered him as our
natural impulse prompts, "according to his folly," we simply tr