“A large family includes many persons of different tastes, habits, modes of thinking and acting, and it would be wise and well to leave to each one that measure of freedom in these respects which the laws of general politeness require. Brothers and sisters may love each other very much, and yet not enough to make joint-stock of all their ideas, plans, wishes, schemes, friendships. There are in every family-circle individuals whom a certain sensitiveness of nature inclines to quietness and reserve; and there are very well-meaning families where no such quietness or reserve is possible. Nobody can be let alone, nobody may have a secret, nobody can move in any direction, without a host of inquiries and comments, ‘Who is your letter from? Let’s see.’--‘My letter is from So-and-So.’--‘_He_ writing to you? I didn’t know that. What’s he writing about?’--‘Where did you go yesterday? What did you buy? What did you give for it? What are you going to do with it?’--‘Seems to me that’s an odd way to do. I shouldn’t do so.’--‘Look here, Mary; Sarah’s going to have a dress of silk tissue this spring. Now I think they’re too dear,--don’t you?’ “I recollect seeing in some author a description of a true gentleman, in which, among other traits, he was characterized as the man that asks the fewest questions. This trait of refined society might be adopted into home-life in a far greater degree than it is, and make it far more agreeable. “If there is perfect unreserve and mutual confidence, let it show itself in free communications coming unsolicited. It may fairly be presumed, that, if there is anything our intimate friends wish us to know, they will tell us of it,--and that when we are on close and confidential terms with persons, and there are topics on which they do not speak to us, it is because for some reason they prefer to keep silence concerning them; and the delicacy that respects a friend’s silence is one of the charms of life. “As with the asking of questions, so with the offering of advice, there should be among friends a wise reticence. “Some families are always calling each other to account at every step of the day. ‘What did you put on that dress for? Why didn’t you wear that?’--‘What did you do this for? Why didn’t you do that?’--‘Now _I_ should advise you to do thus and so.’--And these comments and criticisms and advices are accompanied with an energy of feeling that makes it rather difficult to disregard them. “Now it is no matter how dear and how good our friends may be, if they abridge our liberty and fetter the free exercise of our life, it is inevitable that we shall come to enjoying ourselves much better where they are not than where they are; and one of the reasons why brothers and sisters or children so often diverge from the family-circle in the choice of confidants is, that extraneous friends are bound by certain laws of delicacy not to push inquiries, criticisms, or advice too far.