of their life,--that her vision is at once broader and keener than
theirs,--that her feet have travelled along the paths they are just
beginning to explore,--that she knows all the phases alike of their
strength and their weakness,--and her influence over them is unbounded.
Let them see her uncertain, uncomfortable, hesitating, fearful without
discrimination, leaning where she ought to support, interfering without
power of suggesting, counselling, but not controlling, with no presence,
no bearing, no experience, no prestige, and they will carry matters with
a high hand. They will overrule her decisions, and their love will not
be unmingled with contempt. It will be strong enough to prick them when
they have done wrong, but not strong enough to keep them from doing
wrong.

Nothing gives a young girl such vantage-ground in society and in life as
a mother,--a sensible, amiable, brilliant, and commanding woman. Under
the shelter of such a mother's wing, the neophyte is safe. This mother
will attract to herself the wittiest and the wisest. The young girl can
see society in its best phases, without being herself drawn out into
its glare. She forms her own style on the purest models. She gains
confidence, without losing modesty. Familiar with wisdom, she will not
be dazed by folly. Having the opportunity to make observations before
she begins to be observed, she does not become the prey of the weak and
the wicked. Her taste is strengthened and refined, her standard elevates
itself, her judgment acquires a firm basis. But cast upon her own
resources, her own blank inexperience, at her first entrance into the
world, with nothing to stand between her and what is openly vapid and
covertly vicious, with no clear eye to detect for her the false and
distinguish the true, no strong, firm, judicious hand to guide tenderly
and undeviatingly, to repress without irritating and encourage without
emboldening, what wonder that the peach-bloom loses its delicacy,
deepening into _rouge_ or hardening into brass, and the happy young life
is stranded on a cruel shore?

Hence it follows that our social gatherings consist, to so lamentable
an extent, of pert youngsters or faded oldsters. Thence come those
abominable "young people's parties," where a score or two or three of
boys and girls meet and manage after their own hearts. Thence it happens
that conversation seems to be taking its place among the Lost Arts, and
the smallest of small talk rei