I can fancy the outcry with which this will be received.  What girl will resist such an example?  Their heads are turned by the first glimpse of the world; not one of them is ready to give it up.  That may be; but before you showed them this deceitful prospect, did you prepare them to behold it without emotion?  Did you tell them plainly what it was they would see?  Did you show it in its true light?  Did you arm them against the illusions of vanity?  Did you inspire their young hearts with a taste for the true pleasures which are not to be met with in this tumult?  What precautions, what steps, did you take to preserve them from the false taste which leads them astray?  Not only have you done nothing to preserve their minds from the tyranny of prejudice, you have fostered that prejudice; you have taught them to desire every foolish amusement they can get.  Your own example is their teacher.  Young people on their entrance into society have no guide but their mother, who is often just as silly as they are themselves, and quite unable to show them things except as she sees them herself.  Her example is stronger than reason; it justifies them in their own eyes, and the mother’s authority is an unanswerable excuse for the daughter.  If I ask a mother to bring her daughter into society, I assume that she will show it in its true light.

The evil begins still earlier; the convents are regular schools of coquetry; not that honest coquetry which I have described, but a coquetry the source of every kind of misconduct, a coquetry which turns out girls who are the most ridiculous little madams.  When they leave the convent to take their place in smart society, young women find themselves quite at home.  They have been educated for such a life; is it strange that they like it?  I am afraid what I am going to say may be based on prejudice rather than observation, but so far as I can see, one finds more family affection, more good wives and loving mothers in Protestant than in Catholic countries; if that is so, we cannot fail to suspect that the difference is partly due to the convent schools.

The charms of a peaceful family life must be known to be enjoyed; their delights should be tasted in childhood.  It is only in our father’s home that we learn to love our own, and a woman whose mother did not educate her herself will not be willing to educate her own children.  Unfortunately, there is no such thing as home education in our large towns.  Society is so general and so mixed there is no place left for retirement, and even in the home we live in public.  We live in company till we have no family, and we scarcely know our own relations, we see them as strangers; and the simplicity of home life disappears together with the sweet familiarity which was its charm.  In this wise do we draw with our mother’s milk a taste for the pleasures of the age and the maxims by which it is controlled.