No--and it is not the blushing country maiden, with her simple wardrobe, and simpler manners, whom that mother has to fear for her child’s companion or bed-fellow. It is the over-dressed, vain, vapid, brainless offshoot of upstart aristocracy, who would ridicule the simple gingham in which that country girl’s mother studied geography, and which fabric she very properly considers quite good enough for her child, and which is much more appropriate in the school-room than silk or satin. It is this child of the upstart rich mother, whose priceless infancy and childhood have been spent with illiterate servants; with the exception of the hour after dessert, when she was reminded that she had a mother, by being taken in an embroidered robe to be exhibited for a brief space to her guests. It is this girl, whose childhood, as I said, has been passed with servants, peeping into the doubtful books with which doubtful servants often beguile the tedious hours (for there are bad servants as well as bad masters and mistresses)--this girl, lying awake in her little bed, hearing unguarded details of servants’ amours, while her mother dances away the hours so pregnant with fate to that listening child. It is such a girl, more to be pitied than blamed, whose existence is to be recognized by her thoughtless mother only, when her “coming out,” delayed till the latest possible period, forces her reluctantly to yield to a younger aspirant her own claims to admiration. This girl whose wealth, and the social position arising from it, so dazzles the eyes of proprietors of “Institutes” that they are incapable of perceiving, or unwilling to admit, her great moral and mental delinquencies; it is _such_ a companion that a true mother has to fear for her pure-minded, simple-hearted young daughter, leaving for the first time the guarded threshold and healthful atmosphere of home. And when after months have passed--and insufficient exercise,[A] imperfect ventilation, and improper companionship, have transformed her rosy, healthy, simple-hearted child, to a pale, languid, _spineless_, dressy young woman, with a smattering of fashionable accomplishments, and an incurable distaste of simple, home pleasures--will it restore the bloom to her cheek, the spring to her step, the fresh innocence to her heart, to say, “but the school was fashionable and _so_ well recommended?” [A] Is a formal, listless walk, in a half-mile procession, to answer the purpose of _exercise_ for young, growing girls confined at least ten hours a day over their lessons, and crowded at night into insufficient sleeping-rooms?--from which the highest prices paid for tuition, so far as my observation extends, furnish no immunity. CLOSET MEDITATIONS, NOT FOUND IN JAY OR DODDRIDGE. Shall I ever be unhappy again? Six big closets with shelves and drawers! What a Godsend! You laugh! you are unable to comprehend how such joyful emotions can spring from so trivial a cause.