the majority of women would feel that a single woman of good
standing and ungossiped reputation was a safe and desirable protector
for a young girl.

The same majority would hesitate to send their girls away with a
divorced woman.

But as I remarked in the beginning, I have stood outside the fray and
watched similar ventures, and I have grown to realize that it is not
mere respectability and chastity in a woman which make her a safe
chaperon for a young girl,--it is a deep, full, broad understanding of
temperaments and temptations.

Had I a daughter or a sister like your sweet Millie, I would not allow
her to live one year under the dominion of such a woman as Miss Brown
for any consideration. Why? because Miss Brown is all brain and bigotry.
She is narrow and high, not deep and broad.

She is so orthodox that she incites heresy in the rebellious mind of
independent youth. She is so moral she makes one long for adventure. She
would not listen to any questioning of old traditions, or any
speculative philosophizing of a curious young mind, and she would be
intolerant with any girl who showed an inclination to flirt or be
indiscreet.

Your sister Millie is as coquettish as the rose that lifts its fair face
to the sun, and the breeze, and the bee, and expects to be admired. She
is as innocent as the rose, too, but that fact Miss Brown would never
associate with coquetry.

She would class it with vulgarity and degeneracy. Miss Brown is a
handsome woman, but she has no sex instincts. She does not believe with
the scientist, "that in the process of evolution it is only with the
coming of the sex relation that life is enabled to rise to higher
forms."

She believes in brain and spirit, and is utterly devoid of that feminine
impulse to make herself attractive to men, and wholly incapable of
understanding the fascination that Folly holds out to youth. She has
never experienced any temptation, and she would be shocked at any girl
who fell below her standard.

She would carefully protect Millie from danger by high walls, but she
would never eradicate the danger impulse from her nature by sympathetic
counsel, as a more human woman could.

Mrs. Walton is a much better guide for your sister.

She ran away from boarding-school at seventeen, and married the reckless
son of a rich man. She had a stepmother of the traditional type, and
had never known a happy home life. She was of a loving and trusting and
at the same time a