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is nothing in the society of their wives but insipidity. They married women of accomplishments, but they see never a new development-no improvement. Their wives can do absolutely nothing. The shell is broken; the egg is eaten.

The first accomplishment that I would urge upon you, is that of using the English language with correctness, elegance, and facility. There are comparatively few young women who can write a good note. I know of hardly one who can punctuate her sentences properly. I beg of you never to write affection with a single f, or friendship without an i in the first syllable. Such slips destroy the words, and the sentiment they represent. If you accomplish yourselves in nothing else, learn thoroughly how to use your mother tongue. I remember one young woman with whom, when in youth, I had the misfortune to correspond. In the barrenness of subjects upon which to engage her pen, she once inquired by note whether I ever saw such "a spell of wether," as we had been having. I frankly informed her that I never did, and that I hoped she would never indulge in such another, for it made me cool. She took the hint, and broke off the correspondence.

There are many who can write tolerably well, but who cannot talk. Conversation I am inclined to rank among the greatest accomplishments and the greatest arts. Natural aptness has much to do with this, but no woman can talk well who has not a good stock of definite information. I may add

to this, that no woman talks well and satisfactorily who reads for the simple purpose of talking. There must exist a genuine interest in the affairs which most concern all men and women. The book, magazine, and newspaper literature of the time, questions of public moment, all matters and movements relating to art, affairs of local interestall these a woman may know something of, and know something definitely. Of all these she can talk if she will try, because there is something in all which excites feeling of some kind, and shapes itself into opinion.

But whatever accomplishment a young woman attempts to acquire, let her by all means acquire it thoroughly and keep it bright. Accomplishments all occupy the field of the arts. They are things which have no significance or value save in the ability of doing. They become, or should become, the exponents of a woman's highest personality. They are her most graceful forms of self-expression, and into them she can pour the stream of her thoughts and fancies, and through them utter the highest language of her nature and her culture. Accomplishments make a woman valuable to herself. They greatly increase her pleasure, both directly in the practice, and indirectly through the pleasures which she gives to society. A truly accomplished woman-one whose thoughts have come naturally to flow out in artistic forms, whether through the instrumentality of her tongue, her pen, her pencil, or her piano, is a treasure to her

self and to society.

Such a woman as this would I have you to be. There may be something to interfere with your being all this; but this you can do you can acquire thoroughly every accomplishment for which you have a natural aptitude, or you can let it alone. Do not be content with a smattering of anything. Do not be content to play parrot to your teachers, until your lesson is learned, and then think you are accomplished. Do not be content with mediocrity in any accomplishment you undertake. Do not be content to be a Miss Georgiana Aurelia Atkins Green.

LETTER IV.

Unreasonable and Injurious Restraints.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments.

SHAKSPERE.

SUPPOSE that most men have observed the following facts from which I propose to draw a lesson-First, that young married women have a peculiar charm for unmarried young men, and that a young man's first love is almost uniformly devoted to a woman older than himself.

A marriageable young woman occupies, or is made to occupy, a position of peculiar hardship. Our theory is that a woman should never make an advance towards the man she loves and would marry. Such a step is deemed inconsistent with maiden modesty. I do not quarrel with this, but the effect has been to make young women, who possess sensitive natures, hypocrites. It ought not to do it, but it does. Every modest young woman, possessing a good degree of sagacity, plays a part,

almost always, when in the society of young men. The fear is that by some word, or look, or act, she shall express such a degree of interest in a young man as shall lead him to believe that she is after him. Young women study the effect of their language, they often shun civilities, they put on their artificial and constrained style of behavior, for fear that some complacent fool will misconstrue them, or some gentleman whom they wish to please will deem them too forward, and so become disgusted. The result is, that a man rarely finds out either the best or the worst points of his wife's character before he marries her. Social intercourse is carried on under a kind of protest, which places every young woman in a position absolutely false before the eyes of young men. Many a woman owes a life of celibacy and disappointment to the fact that she never felt at liberty to act out herself.

With these statements, it is very easy to understand the attractions which a young married woman has for a bachelor, and to explain the phenomenon of a young man falling in love with a woman older than himself. In the first instance,

a married woman becomes agreeable because she becomes perfectly natural and unconstrained, her circumstances allowing all the more grateful forms of politeness-the cordial greeting, the complimentary attentions, and the free conversation-without the danger of being misconstrued. In the latter instance, the woman throws off her constraint in

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