have the large majority of people, regarding these as the elect of the
earth. Well, if so, let girls, when they come to be women, find this out
for themselves. But as children and girls, let not their freedom, their
spontaneity, be hampered by such unlovely distinctions. Teach them to
love all that is good and pleasant in humanity, and let the daughter of a
marchioness at school make friends with the daughter of a grocer, without
condescension on one side, or undue humility or concealment on the other.
Why should not a school seek rather to be a republic, based upon the
lovable and republican principles of Christ’s Christianity? The children
of both classes will be the gainers, and each will leave school with a
hearty esteem for the other. Relations can terminate here, for there
is no reason why school girls should continue to be friends if their
parents see any cause for objection to the intimacy; but there is every
reason that they should learn to appreciate the good there is to be found
in those of a different social rank from theirs—inferior or superior.
This is the very last thing they may hope to learn in a fashionable
convent, since there are no greater worshippers at the shrine of birth
and fortune than nuns. I am aware that the difficulties in the way of
maintaining such a free mingling of the classes would assuredly come from
the parents. The nobles would be horrified if assurance were withheld
of perfect social exclusiveness for their offspring, and still more
angry would be the sham nobles, the purse-proud snobs, whose selection
of a convent for their daughters depends solely upon its fashionable
reputation. It may also be contended that the society of the better
classes unfits a girl of the commercial class for her after surroundings.
But this fact also is based upon false prejudice. Lift the girl’s moral
tone, and she will find something else in the acquirement of good manners
than contempt of her equals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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