And this is the way I have often heard mothers talk!  Yet, could parents foresee the almost inevitable consequences of such a system, I believe the weakest and vainest would abandon the false and dangerous theory.  What a lesson is taught a girl in that sentence, ’Let her enjoy herself all she can, while she is single!’ Instead of representing domestic life as the gathering place of the deepest and purest affections; as the sphere of woman’s enjoyments as well as of her duties; as, indeed, the whole world to her; that one pernicious sentence teaches a girl to consider matrimony desirable because ’a good match’ is a triumph of vanity, and it is deemed respectable to be ‘well settled in the world;’ but that it is a necessary sacrifice of her freedom and her gayety.  And then how many affectionate dispositions have been trained into heartlessness, by being taught that the indulgence of indolence and vanity were necessary to their happiness; and that to have this indulgence, they must marry money!  But who that marries for money, in this land of precarious fortunes, can tell how soon they will lose the glittering temptation, to which they have been willing to sacrifice so much?  And even if riches last as long as life, the evil is not remedied.  Education has given a wrong end and aim to their whole existence; they have been taught to look for happiness where it never can be found, viz. in the absence of all occupation, or the unsatisfactory and ruinous excitement of fashionable competition.

The difficulty is, education does not usually point the female heart to its only true resting-place.  That dear English word ‘home,’ is not half so powerful a talisman as ‘the world.’  Instead of the salutary truth, that happiness is in duty, they are taught to consider the two things totally distinct; and that whoever seeks one, must sacrifice the other.

The fact is, our girls have no home education.  When quite young, they are sent to schools where no feminine employments, no domestic habits, can be learned; and there they continue till they ‘come out’ into the world.  After this, few find any time to arrange, and make use of, the mass of elementary knowledge they have acquired; and fewer still have either leisure or taste for the inelegant, every-day duties of life.  Thus prepared, they enter upon matrimony.  Those early habits, which would have made domestic care a light and easy task, have never been taught, for fear it would interrupt their happiness; and the result is, that when cares come, as come they must, they find them misery.  I am convinced that indifference and dislike between husband and wife are more frequently occasioned by this great error in education, than by any other cause.