Year: 1869

not altogether lost. The clandestine billet, the
dropped kerchief the mods and becks and
wreathed smiles are excellent practice. But
the accomplished graduates are wise IN their
generation. Though they have learned that
flirting is admirable and never too much to be
encouraged that it develops the intellect and
inspires the soul, that all the virtues with
folded wings follow in its train, that to young
women il is q fOretaste of heaven and TO
young men one of the primal duties shining
alOft like stars, they have learned also not to
tread on the dangerous edge of things.
Too much of the training of their
city life goes to teach them the
inestimable value of money, and of the
goods which money buys. 1t goes to teach
them that they are the lilies of life which are
to toll not, neither spin, and to commend to
them the wisdom of GOody Barbauld, "nor
blush, my fair, to own you copy these your
Z" best, your sweetest empire, is to please" 1t
goes to teach them that marriage is the COM
passing of luxures, the possession Of an estab-


ishment And loyal to their scheme of life,
they will not commit themselves to poverty.
The most tempting Irritation stops short on
the hither side of that, and they say properly,
marry money without regard to the quality of
its possessOr, knowing well that If a beast be
lord of beasts his crib may stand at the kings
mess. We know well, who have long OBJ
served the world, how this system Of marriage
works The children, if there be any, born of
harmonious conditions, and of that vigorous
health of the mother which Finishing School
training, tight lacing, and sedentary habits
produce are of fine physical and moral fiber.
They grow up to be the Caroline Pettitoes
and Gauehe BOrseys of society. The girls re-
peat their mothers history. The boys take a
leaf from their fathers book, and together
they are bulwarks and pillars of Republican
institutions


We are but rough people. We have spent
our energies in planting corn, and building
fences, and making railroads, finding our ac-
count in it, and setting forth on the railroads
to plant more cOrn-felds, and sit complacently
astride of fresh fences round pastures new.
We greatly need what the principal of one of
our most fashionable Finishing Schools pleased
to describe as her aim" the cultivation of ele-
"gant leisure" Women, being the civilizers of
men, must first attain it. 1t is to be attained,
as we have shown, in the skinning of a hund-
red books, in a little handful of accomplish
ments in a determination to make and to have
money, and in the taking up of life as pretty
play. The Finishing Schools will help lis to
the ideal of fashionable life in London and
Paris, if anything can. Fashionable mothers
have only to neglect all supervision of
their daughters, save in respect of their
clothes, fashionable teachers have only to
exaggerate little their present system of
want of instruction, to turn out every year an
increasing number of hundreds of specimens
of young ladyhood, each the counterpart of
the other, each certain to run the same career
with each other, each to prove the ignoble
mother of ignoble offspring. 81 won't go so
far as to say,n said the excellent Mrs.
farley, "that I've seen waxwork exactly
" like nature, but I've certainly seen some
mature that was exactly like waxwOrk."