READER. To my daughter I will say: the social order in which we live requires, my child, that you shall superintend your house; the state of Society is still far distant in which our sex will be relieved from this function. Do not forget that the prosperity of the family depends on the spirit of order and economy of the wife. What your fortune or special business exempts you from executing, superintend and direct. Extravagance of dress and furniture now surpasses all bounds. Luxury is not wrong in itself, but in the existing state of things, it is a great relative evil, for we have not yet resolved the problem of increasing and varying products without at the same time increasing the wretchedness and debasement of their producers. Be simple therefore: this does not exclude elegance, but only those piles of silks and laces which trail in the dust of the streets, those diamonds and precious stones which make the fortune of the few at the expense of the morality of the many, and which are only dead capital, the liberation of which would be productive of great good. Do not suffer yourself to be ensnared by the sophism that honest women must adorn themselves to hinder men from passing their time with courtesans. Would you not be ashamed to compete in dress with women whom you do not esteem, and would the man who could be retained by such means be worth the trouble? I have instructed you in your legal position as wife, mother and property holder; I marry you under the system of separation of goods in order to spare your husband the temptation of regarding himself as your master; in order that he may be obliged to take your advice and to look upon you as his partner. Despite these precautions, you will be a minor, since the law thus decrees. But our law is not Reason: never forget that you are a human being; that is, a being endowed like your husband with intellect, sentiments, free will, and inclination; that you owe submission only to Reason and your conscience; that if it is your duty to make sacrifices to the peace in little things, and to tolerate the faults of your husband as he should tolerate yours, it is none the less your duty resolutely to resist a brutal--_I will have it so_. You will be a mother, I hope; nurse your children yourself, rear them in the principles of Right and Duty which I have instilled into your intellect and heart, in order to make of them, not only just, good, chaste men and women, but laborers in the great work of Progress.