The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 13, September, 1835Various
History
The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 13, September, 1835
Various
American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals
the best affections of our hearts. How is this to be done, especially
in our female schools, which in fact are the great laboratories for
forming elementary teachers for our whole population,--if nearly, or
quite half the time of the pupils be taken up in learning to dance, to
draw, to play on musical instruments, and to acquire polite manners,
by going at stated times to private assemblies, to plays, and operas,
as we have heard is the practice in some city schools. One of two
things invariably follows from this course; either the whole stock of
accomplishments, (as they are called,) however costly it may have
been, is entirely abandoned the moment the girls get married, because
the acquisition has always been to them a kind of up-hill work, for
which they had not the smallest taste--or, such a passionate fondness
is contracted for them, that they can find pleasure in no other
occupation. The fatal disease of discontent is the result in both
those cases. But suppose the last to be the most common. Are domestic
habits, so indispensable to the comfort and happiness of married life,
to be formed by acquiring a passion for public spectacles, for
company-keeping, and for all the preparatory equipments of costly
apparel, and other personal decorations? Can the tranquil pleasures of
retirement, the occupations of housekeeping, the necessary management
of all the domiciliary concerns of which the mistresses of families
must always take cognizance, have any charms for ladies educated in
what is called the fashionable style? Will not all such things rather
be insupportably irksome, if not actually disgusting? How will such
ladies be prepared to meet the numerous inconveniences and troubles,
the many unpleasant, and often painful occurrences that take place,
sometimes even in the happiest families? How can they bear all the
fatigues, the various trials of temper, the actual labors incident to
domestic life, if the sole object of the chief lessons which they have
received at school, has been to attract attention and admiration to
themselves? What, but the most inordinate selfishness and vanity can
be the fruit of such training? Will such preparatory studies teach
them how to keep their houses and families in order--to train their
offspring in the paths of knowledge and virtue--to administer
consolation to the sick and the dying--in a word, to turn all the
numerous incidents of domestic life to the moral and religious
improvement of those over whom it is their business and sacred duty to
exercise a constant and parental supervision? Alas! my friends, there
is scarcely any thing in all nature so illy qualified to fulfil these
momentous obligations, as a young lady educated in what is called the
fashionable style--unless, by the providence of God, she may have been
first imbued under the parental roof, with moral and religious
principles too strong to be overcome by such powerful engines of
destruction as are constantly at work to destroy them, in what are
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