It is assuredly the duty of parents to be very careful in training up their children in the ways of virtue, and to have a due regard for their honour and reputation: and more especially to young women, when grown up to be marriageable. Parental authority in most cases ought to be obeyed by children; but when an undue severity is exercised by parents in attempting to thwart the affections of a son or daughter, and compel the one or the other to violently snap asunder the tenderest ties, then that authority becomes questionable; and except for the most weighty reasons, ought not to be exercised. Alas! what numerous lamentable illustrations of undue parental authority in regard to the affections of their children are constantly occurring—sons leaving the parental abode, rushing into the haunts of vice and dissipation, and wrecking their fair prospects on the numerous shoals and quicksands which are so fatal to the unwary—daughters flying from the domestic assylum, which ought to shelter them from every storm, and subjecting themselves to perhaps a far worse condition than that they are fleeing from, in being exposed to the attacks of the human wolves who are nightly prowling in the streets of our large cities, in search of the defenceless females who are wandering about homeless and disconsolate. And when these victims of parental severity have fallen into the pit which has been dug for them, probably the parents, too late, repent of their severity, which has brought an indelible stain upon their family. Parents, be cautious of thwarting the affection of your children.