If you see that a salutary effect may be obtained by a prudent and respectful observation, be slow in making it, and never act before having consulted some virtuous and enlightened persons; should they advise you in the affirmative, let your observation assume the tone of a remonstration rather than a warning. Your language, actions or gestures should never savor of anything that betrayed a disregard for that profound veneration with which you should honor in them the title of God's representatives in your regard. An unfortunate custom, the fruit of a bad education, or of an excessive tenderness on the part of parents, has sadly vitiated the nature and form of the relations that should exist between child and parent. During the present century in many places a fatal familiarity seems to have sapped the very foundation from that profound respect which was the honor and glory of the Christian family, and the salt that preserves nations from corruption; that respect which children, who truly feared God, paid to their parents. To that beautiful order that reigned in the Christian family, and which preserved inviolable the father's authority in Christian times, has succeeded a spirit of equality as hostile to the natural order as to the order of Divine Providence, since it destroys both rank and duty. It gives birth to that false independence which may justly be called the seed of revolution and anarchy; no consequence is more natural, for what can be expected of a citizen who imbibed in his childhood, under the paternal roof, the spirit of disobedience and insubordination, who was taught to regard superiority with a jealous eye, and treat with contempt those who are beneath him. After paying due respect to your parents, they should be, after God, the depositories of your confidence, and since a daughter's wants are more easily communicated to her mother, it is in her mother's heart that a Christian daughter will deposit the secrets of her own. This filial confidence supposes, also, in a young lady a sincere diffidence in her self, a consciousness of her own weakness which, so far from being a fault, is the result of true humility. Those young ladies who are wanting in confidence in their own mothers are indeed great objects of compassion. For this confidence is not only an essential condition to their advancement in virtue, but also one of their principal safeguards against deception and intrigue.