rom a centre. "To love the little
platoon we belong to in society," said Burke, "is the germ of all public
affections." The wisest and best have not been ashamed to own it to be
their greatest joy and happiness to sit "behind the heads of children" in
the inviolable circle of home.

[Illustration]

{26}

To Young Women.

[Illustration: MEDITATION.]

1. TO BE A WOMAN, in the truest and highest sense of the word, is to be the
best thing beneath the skies. To be a woman is something more than to live
eighteen or twenty years; something more than to grow to the physical
stature of women; something more than to wear flounces, exhibit dry goods,
sport jewelry, catch the gaze of lewd-eyed men; {27} something more than to
be a belle, a wife, or a mother. Put all these qualifications together and
they do but little toward making a true woman.

2. BEAUTY AND STYLE are not the surest passports to womanhood--some of the
noblest specimens of womanhood that the world has ever seen have presented
the plainest and most unprepossessing appearance. A woman's worth is to be
estimated by the real goodness of her heart, the greatness of her soul, and
the purity and sweetness of her character; and a woman with a kindly
disposition and well-balanced temper is both lovely and attractive, be her
face ever so plain, and her figure ever so homely; she makes the best of
wives and the truest of mothers.

3. BEAUTY IS A DANGEROUS GIFT.--It is even so. Like wealth, it has ruined
its thousands. Thousands of the most beautiful women are destitute of
common sense and common humanity. No gift from heaven is so general and so
widely abused by woman as the gift of beauty. In about nine cases in ten it
makes her silly, senseless, thoughtless, giddy, vain, proud, frivolous,
selfish, low and mean. I think I have seen more girls spoiled by beauty
than by any other one thing. "She is beautiful, and she knows it," is as
much as to say that she is spoiled. A beautiful girl is very likely to
believe she was made to be looked at; and so she sets herself up for a show
at every window, in every door, on every corner of the street, in every
company at which opportunity offers for an exhibition of herself.

4. BEWARE OF BEAUTIFUL WOMEN.--These facts have long since taught sensible
men to beware of beautiful women--to sound them carefully before they give
them their confidence. Beauty is shallow--only skin deep; fleeting--only
for a few years' reign; dangerous-