FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116  
117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   >>   >|  
friends. Guard within your own breast, however you may long for the relief of giving a free vent to your feelings, any sorrows or any apprehensions that cannot be removed or obviated by their revelation. Thus will you unite in yourself the combined advantages of the frivolous and intellectual; your society will be loved and sought after as much as that of the first can be, (only, however, by the wise and good--my assertion extends no further,) and you will at the same time be respected, consulted, and imitated, as the clever and educated can alone be. I have hitherto spoken only of the unmarried among your acquaintance: let us now turn to the wives and mothers, and observe, with pity, the position of her, who, though she may be well and fondly loved, is felt at the same time to be incapable of bestowing sympathy or counsel. It is indeed, perhaps, the wife and mother who is the best loved who will at the same time be made the most deeply to feel her powerlessness to appreciate, to advise, or to guide: the very anxiety to hide from her that it is the society, the opinion, and the sympathy of others which is really valued, because it alone can be appreciative, will make her only the more sensibly aware that she is deficient in the leading qualities that inspire respect and produce usefulness. She must constantly feel her unfitness to take any part in the society that suits the taste of her more intellectual husband and children. She must observe that they are obliged to bring down their conversation to her level, that they are obliged to avoid, out of deference to, and affection for her, all those varied topics which make social intercourse a useful as well as an agreeable exercise of the mental powers, an often more improving arena of friendly discussion than perhaps any professed debating society could be. No such employment of social intercourse can, however, be attempted when one of the heads of the household is uneducated and unintellectual. The weather must form the leading, and the only safe topic of conversation; for the gossip of the neighbourhood, commented on in the freedom and security of family life, imparts to all its members a petty censoriousness of spirit that can never afterwards be entirely thrown off. Then the education of the children of such a mother as I have described must be carried on under the most serious disadvantages. Money in abundance may be at her disposal, but that is of little avail w
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116  
117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
society
 

observe

 

obliged

 
leading
 

children

 

conversation

 

mother

 

intercourse

 

social

 

sympathy


intellectual

 
education
 

varied

 
affection
 
deference
 

agreeable

 

thrown

 

topics

 

carried

 

unfitness


husband

 

disadvantages

 

disposal

 

abundance

 

exercise

 
family
 

constantly

 

uneducated

 

household

 

unintellectual


gossip

 

neighbourhood

 
freedom
 

security

 

weather

 

attempted

 

employment

 

censoriousness

 

spirit

 

improving


commented
 
powers
 

friendly

 

members

 

imparts

 
debating
 

discussion

 
professed
 
mental
 

assertion