Year: 1879

restricted; as to tending them as if they were fedglings, liable at any moment to tumble out of the nest or to try their inexperienced wings before the cruel hawks, that ;s something almost un- known here. Our girls make up the chief element of fashionable society. It is for them and their pleasure, and in it they have the opportunity to exhibit the charms and exercise the wit that wins them husbands. They are as ready to talk with man properly introduced as with women, and are perhaps more ready in their speech with him. They l do rot look on the male creature as a strange and dangerous being, and in any conversational sparring with him a girl feels and is entirely able to take care of herself

 Herein is one of the chief charms of our girls, both to their own countrymen and to foreigners. They are not afraid to be the companions of men, and they associate wi h them asamatter ofcourse, while to secure their society men have to be careful to avoid giving offense to the feminine sense of propriety. There are rude, audacious and fast girls, and there are fellows enough about to en- courage them in speech and conduct which are unmaidenly and unladylike to degree that opens them to a criti- cism that might shock their friends and themselves also. But, taking them as whole, emitting only very small per centage, the daughters of our well-or- dered families are as safe as If they went about attended by regiment of discreet matrons, though they may only occasionally have a chaperon. They are l 1n-er l. emplary matrons.

 To adopt the French method of espi- onage would be to put notions into their heads which would prove more danger ous enemies to their maidenly security and natural modesty than any they en- counter now. But it is foolish to talk about so totally changing our social cus- toms. It can't be done, and so far as the attempt has been made to do it snobbery or silly affectation of foreign ways has been at the bottom of 1t. Girls will con tinue to get their moral training in the family circle, and so long as domestic virtue and the influence of maternal pre- cept and example continue to be pure, as it is now, they will need no further ar nor. When they reach such pass that they must be watched like suspicious thieves, to keep them straight, they will have passed beyond the hope of saliva tion, and it will be hard to find watchers who can themselves be trusted. But pa- rents can do this much, and the olderand richer the country grows the more ne cessity there is for such prudence. They can take care to keep predatory fellows out of their houses and their daughters out of the society they frequent. I'm pudence to women, learned abroad, is commoner already than formerly, and young girls may require help to escape from it. A mother needn't dog the foot steps of her daughters, but she can have a good deal to do in determining the company they shall keep, without stir ring up their opposition, or driving them into deception. The credentials which may admit man into fashionable draw ing rooms, everybody knows, do not al- ways indicate his fitness for the society ofyoung women who have been properly reared. There are plenty of fellows girls should meet only in a crowd, if any where.

 Our religious contemporary says the Boston Chief of Police declares that there are hundreds of girls belonging to respectable Boston families who have adopted ways of which they would blush to have their relatives know. There are some exceptionally bad things about the Puritan capital, if reports are true; but they can't be cured by any system of police espionage. Fortunately, 1t seems to be q local trouble, and we join the Uatchma,a in calling the attention of the moral and religious doctors of Boston to