been theirs for ever, and from which they should have been allowed to go reluctantly to the husband, who appreciates his wife a thousandfold if he understands he is only allowed possession on sufferance, and that she was wanted by her own people quite as badly as ever he could want her himself. And this brings me round to the question of giving the girls their own room in the house, where they can do just what they please, and where they can ask their own friends to tea should they desire to do so; not, however, in the American way, which empowers the young people to have festivals whenever they like, and to ask whom they like to them, but in a mitigated form, which compels them to ask permission to entertain, and furthermore to produce a list of names, so that full knowledge may be the mother’s portion, and that she may know exactly who is coming, and, moreover, what is going on. If the girls have their own sitting-room, they feel their residence under the paternal roof is meant to last as long as the roof itself, and they have not that hurried, disagreeable feeling some unfortunate girls must be given by the parents who make no provision for their permanent comfort, and who openly speak of what they shall do when So-and-so gets married; poor So-and-so, who has never had an offer in her life, and shrinks away from every man she sees, as she cannot help regarding him as the monster who carries off a damsel whether she wishes it or not, because the fetish of home has to be appeased, and the fabric kept together by the quick sacrifice of those who are old enough to be chained to the rock to await his advances. The home--of the making and the decorating, the management, and the keeping together of which I feel I can never say too much--cannot possibly be made too happy, too pleasant for the younger members of it; but they in their turn must understand that they, too, have their part in the whole to perform. The grown-up daughter in such a home is a most precious possession; she can save her mother endless trouble, she can and does take the burden of most of the detail on her shoulders, and for her, therefore, should be arranged some place, no matter how small, that she can call her own, and where she can in some measure do much as she likes, for she is sure to have some pet occupation--friends to write to, work to do, all sorts of things to see about, and which she can only attend to in a room set apart for her and her belongings.