Produced by Bryan Ness, Marcia and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from scans of public domain works at the University of Michigan's Making of America collection.) [Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer errors, including punctuation, have been corrected. All other inconsistencies have been left as they were in the original.] AIMS AND AIDS FOR Girls and Young Women, ON THE VARIOUS DUTIES OF LIFE, INCLUDING PHYSICAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT; SELF-CULTURE, IMPROVEMENT, DRESS, BEAUTY, FASHION, EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION, THE HOME RELATIONS, THEIR DUTIES TO YOUNG MEN, MARRIAGE, WOMANHOOD AND HAPPINESS. BY REV. G. S. WEAVER, AUTHOR OF "HOPES AND HELPS," "MENTAL SCIENCE," "WAYS OF LIFE," ETC. NEW YORK: FOWLER AND WELLS, PUBLISHERS, 308 BROADWAY. London: William Horsell, 492 Oxford Street. BOSTON: } 1856. { PHILADELPHIA: 142 Washington-st.} { No. 231 Arch-street. ENTERED, ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS, IN THE YEAR 1855, BY FOWLER AND WELLS, IN THE CLERK'S OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK. DAVIES AND ROBERTS, STEREOTYPERS, 201 William Street, New York. PREFACE. My interest in woman and our common humanity is my only apology for writing this book. I see multitudes of young women about me, whose general training is so deficient in all that pertains to the best ideas of life, and whose aims and efforts are so unworthy of their powers of mind and heart, that I can not make peace with my own conscience without doing something to elevate their aims and quicken their aspirations for the good and pure in thought and life. Our female schools are but poor apologies for the purposes of mind-culture and soul-development. The idea of life they inspire is but a skeleton of custom-service and fashion-worship. It is altogether subservient to what is, not what should be. Society does little else than to teach its girls to be dolls and drudges. The prevailing current of instruction and influence is deplorably low. I feel confident that the best part of society is longing for something better. To obtain it, each one has but to live out, and express to the world his idea of a true life. In regard to the book I may say, whatever it lacks it has the merit of being in earnest. I hope those who see its deficiencies will make haste to supply them in some form of instruction or encouragement to the class the book addresses. Thinking fathers and mothers and teachers will not complain of this humble effort to serve their daughters and pupils, but will rather add more in a similar direction, and seek to complete what I have endeavored to begin. While life is spared, I hope to work in this field, that my own daughters, as well as those of others, may attain a worthy womanhood. G. S. W. ST. LOUIS, 1855. CONTENTS. Lecture One. GIRLHOOD.