CONVEN going in ching a Sun duce repulsion, if not terror, for the only a Meanwhile, during the adolescent years of bag out her the inquisitive and the acquiescent young woaintance, Th her mind was being colored by the effeminatason that t lovers, with a happy ending in marriage. fe. The exh tion of the day, whose chief note was loveted from tin the experiences of the heroine did not seem zest of the made it all the more alluring. In this drealan even more respond with the lives of the women sherateful mutua there were no puzzling and inevitable e man it mig considerate; the heroine beautiful andad the full all nature-the lover was always pure and bf his life if th There was no baby even, as in real life, tn, probably, b tate difficulties, except on the last pageinvulgarized mi might arrive to fulfil the hope of an he ignorance of the Somewhere along this road of femige were the culm the girl received a shock; from the n her natural insti her own community, she heard that soher innocent dread perhaps, or more often through some "fe of her own great property. ed to have. To 17 CONVENTIONS OF GIRLHOOD er," "going into society," playing the piano, aching a Sunday-school class, and in moding out her charms on the young men of intance, The Lover arrived. It is not ason that the period of courtship has ed from time immemorial as the hapThe exhilaration of quickening inst of the game of advance and reeful mutual flattery, are full of joy even more than to the man. an it might become the highest = life if the ending were happy, he full allurement of novelty. -obably, brought to their final garized mind, a chaste person, ance of the other sex, such as have. For ere the culmination of a long To the woman court boyhood, full of joy. Certainly it was so when the parents were wise and sympathetic, and the children born with a harmonious temperament in a normal body. But the unconscious joy usually attributed to childhood has not so often existed in fact. Not even yet are parents wise enough to restrain without arbitrary coercion; to make the path of discipline and duty more alluring than that of self-indulgence; and to provide a wholesome outlet for physical energy. Nor are they sympathetic enough to enter into the fearsome questions of the young soul, and, out of the richness of adult experience, guide it till it attains courage and self-poise. In a girlhood such as I have been describing, happiness was only possible to the girl who submitted to the conventional mold. The more vigorous she was, the more potential character she had, the less easy she would find it to conform to the pattern laid before her. And if she did conform she was likely to arrive at womanhood physically undeveloped, and robbed of a part of her bodily vigor; prudish and ignorant, yet eager to be married; without preparation for domestic and maternal cares, and incapable of earning a fair living wage by any other means; and with an abnormally feminized conscience, which had no conception of men or the moral issues of their lives. The girl of the middle Nineteenth Century was fortunate if, by the grace of God and the accident of heedless parents, she sometimes arrived at the goal of marriage a little less docile, pretty, anemic, conscientious, and incompetent than the ideals of her time would have had her become. CHAPTER II THE GREAT ADVENTURE "As the vine which has long twined in graceful foliage about the oak, and has been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant has been rifled by the thunderbolt, cling around it with its caressing tendrils, and bind up its shattered boughs, so it is beautifully ordained by Providence that woman, who is the ornament and dependent of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity, winding herself into the sudden recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart."From The Lady's Album, 1848. "Woman has a better, a holier vocation. She works in the elements of human nature. Her orders of architecture are formed in the human soul-Obedience, Temperance, Truth, Love, Piety-these she must build up in the character of her children; often she is called upon to repair the ravages which sin, care, and the desolating storms of life leave in the mind and heart of her husband, whom she reverences and obeys. This task she should perform faithfully but with humility; remembering that it was for woman's sake Eden was forfeited, because Adam loved his wife more than his Creator."-Mrs. S. J. HALE in Woman's Record, 1872. Neither was "But the woman is the glory of the man. the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man."PAUL to the Corinthians. THE truest things are the platitudes which everybody speaks, but which few ever think of practising. The sensible men and women of the |