y 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 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 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 reigns in its stead. Society,
instead of giving its tone to the children, takes it from them, and
since it cannot be juvenile, becomes insipid, and because it is too old
to prattle, jabbers. Talkers are everywhere, but where are the men
that say things? Where are the people that can be listened to and
quoted? Where are the flinty people whose contact strikes fire? Where
are the electric people who thrill a whole circle with sudden vitality?
Where are the strong people who hedge themselves around with their
individuality, and will be roused by no p