ions, not by
an invariable rule, except the invariable rule of keeping clean. Not
necessarily every day, nor necessarily in cold water; though those
conditions are doubtless often right in case of abundant physical health
and strength.
5. WRONG HABITS.--The habit of daily natural evacuations should be
solicitously formed and maintained. Words or figures could never express
the discomforts and wretchedness which wrong habits in this particular have
locked down upon innumerable women for years and even for life.
6. DRESS.--Dress should be warm, loose, comely, and modest rather than
showy; but it should be good enough to satisfy a child's desires after a
good appearance, if they are reasonable. Children, indeed, should have all
their reasonable desires granted as far as possible; for nothing makes them
reasonable so rapidly and so surely as to treat them reasonably.
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7. TIGHT LACING.--Great harm is often done to maidens for want of knowledge
in them, or wisdom and care in their parents. The extremes of fashions are
very prone to violate not only taste, but physiology. Such cases are tight
lacing, low necked dresses, thin shoes, heavy skirts. And yet, if the
ladies only knew, the most attractive costumes are not the extremes of
fashion, but those which conform to fashion enough to avoid oddity, which
preserve decorum and healthfulness, whether or no; and here is the great
secret of successful dress--vary fashion so as to suit the style of the
individual.
8. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE.--Last of all, parental care in the use of
whatever influence can be exerted in the matter of courtship and marriage.
Maidens, as well as youths, must, after all, choose for themselves. It is
their own lives which they take in their hands as they enter the marriage
state, and not their parents'; and as the consequences affect them
primarily it is the plainest justice that with the responsibility should be
joined the right of choice. The parental influence, then, must be indirect
and advisory. Indirect, through the whole bringing up of their daughter;
for if they have trained her aright, she will be incapable of enduring a
fool, still more a knave.
9. A YOUNG WOMAN AND A YOUNG MAN HAD BETTER NOT BE ALONE TOGETHER VERY MUCH
UNTIL THEY ARE MARRIED.--This will be found to prevent a good many
troubles. It is not meant to imply that either sex, or any member of it, is
worse than another, or bad at all, or anything but human. It is simply
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