The reputation of a young woman is of the most delicate texture.  It requires not overt acts of actual wickedness to tarnish its brightness, and cast suspicion on its purity.  Indiscreet language, careless deportment, a want of discrimination in regard to associates, even when no evil is done, or intended, will often bring into question her character, greatly to her injury.  Many are the instances where a single word, spoken at random, in the giddy thoughtlessness of youthful vivacity, without the slightest thought of wrong, has cast a shadow upon the character of a young woman which it required years to efface.  How important that every word uttered, and every deed performed, should be maturely weighed.  A discreet lady will not only be careful to avoid evil itself, but will studiously refrain from everything which has even the appearance of evil.

    “Whatever dims thy sense of truth,
      Or stains thy purity,
     Though light as breath of summer air,
      Count it as sin to thee.”

Young women frequently err in their understanding of what it is that gives them a good name, and imparts their chief attraction.  Many seem to imagine that good looks, a gay attire, in the extreme of fashion, and a few showy attainments, constitute everything essential to make them interesting and attractive, and to establish a high reputation in the estimation of the other sex.  Hence they seek for no other attainments.  In this, they make a radical mistake.  The charms contained in these qualities, are very shallow, very worthless, and very uncertain.  There can no dependence be placed upon them.

If there is one point more than another, in this respect, where young ladies err, it is in regard to dress.  There are not a few who suppose that dress is the most important thing for which they have been created, and that it forms the highest attraction of woman.  Under this mistaken notion—­this poor infatuation—­they plunge into every extravagance in their attire; and, in this manner, squander sums of money, which would be much more profitably expended in storing their minds with useful knowledge, or, in some cases, even in procuring the ordinary comforts of life.

There is a secret on this point I would like to divulge to young women.  It is this—­That any dress, which from its oddness, or its extreme of fashion and display, is calculated to attract very particular attention, is worn at the expense of the good name of its possessor.  It raises them in the estimation of none; but deprives them of the good opinion of all sensible people.  It gives occasion for suspicion, not only of their good sense, but of their habits of economy.  When a young woman is given to extravagant displays in dress, it is but publishing to the world, her own consciousness of a want of other attractions of a more substantial nature.  It is but virtually saying, “I seek to excite attention by my dress, because I have no other good quality by which I can secure attention.”