Christian literature for children; Women -- Social and moral questions; Young women -- Conduct of life
Avoid discourtesy, but avoid still more a hollow, insincere, merely
outward, gracefulness. If the feelings be correct, the manner will
usually be so. Corregio painted three furies, represented by as many
young women, with beautiful forms and regular features. Looking
intently on the hair, you might see a single serpent wreathed in its
tresses; and studying the expression of their countenances, you detected
in them cunning, malice, and cruelty. Such "beauty" and grace are truly
"vain."
No single quality is so essential in society as a willingness to be
pleased. "There is one art," says a late writer, "which those whose
object it is to charm, would do well to cultivate, the art of being
charmed. For it rescues many an hour from listlessness and discontent,
by freshening all the springs of life and action, awakening in old age
the energy of youth, and persuading the weary and desponding that they
have still the power to please, and that even for them the world has
happiness in store." Opposed to this stands caprice, a morbid desire of
attention, a self-consequence, which would draw all eyes and all
thoughts to its own important person. This spirit is full of coldness,
jealousy, and every unamiable sentiment. Let the young woman forget
herself, and study the feelings of others. She will then notice the
modest, encourage the diffident, and strive to call forth concealed
talent and virtue. She will scrupulously avoid all allusions, that would
give pain to the hearer. His ill-fortune, the trade he pursues, if
unpopular, or his low extraction, or the faults of his connections, and
his own misdemeanors, will be carefully kept out of view. Thus will the
inward man be perpetually overflowing with Christian courtesy.
Good Sense is another requisite of female civility. "The excitable
imagination and ardent feelings of woman," says a female writer, "expose
her to exaggeration of sentiment." Ignorant and weak women mortify their
friends and disgust many others, in society. They talk for the sound's
sake, giving flippant utterance to the commonplaces of the day. But did
God endow this sex with speech, to be exercised only on folly and
nonsense? No, we have seen too many living examples to the contrary, of
women
"alike from careless levity remote,
And a behavior schooled by selfish rules,
Alike removed from rashness and from fear."
Is not this better than the indulgence in perpetual trifling and tattle?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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