Miss O. Prudery is less delicacy than affectation, the suspicion of evil in others, not the shrinking from it ourselves. Prudery likes to display that it is shocked, when delicacy would dread the seeming to notice anything amiss. I believe prudery is the tainted mind trying to assume the mask of modesty.

Helena. Making a fuss instead of keeping quiet.

Miss O. It seems to me that modesty is the instinct of the pure mind, an unconscious guard on joyous spirits, hindering anything unseemly, such as courting notice, unchecked voices, boisterous mirth, or over-venturesome

ness.

Mary. Is it modest to be timid? I thought not when Caroline Jones was afraid of our cows without Cousin Edward.

Miss O. True, there is an unsuitable timidity, exaggerated or assumed, to obtain attention, and a rightly shamefaced woman will often conquer real fears rather than be noticed or helped. But daring, merely to attract notice, or to brave censure, is still worse.

Helena. Surely it is not wrong to be spirited and active?

Miss O. No, indeed, many an active out-of-door sport requiring courage and dexterity is very good for girls as long as it can be carried on in obedience and unobtrusiveness. What is done to astonish and gain attention is either unfeminine or contemptible.

Helena. Or what throws a woman into the unmixed society of men, or gets her talked about. I have heard mamma say that.

Miss O. In general, the disregard of ordinary habits and conventionalities, especially for amusement's sake. Helena. I thought conventionalities were foolish.

Miss O. Selfishly regarded they may do harm. Sometimes a really modest woman puts herself aside, and guarded by her simple purpose, does her task of mercy unheed

ing what may be said of her; but this is not for pleasure, nor for self-will, not for self at all. Men may rule conventionalities, and the will of father or husband decides woman's conduct, but otherwise she is like a sheep beyond the fold when once she transgresses the bien séances of her own country and station, and if she should be insulted, she has no right to complain. I say this because young ladies are apt to fancy it grand to be above conventionality when they are the very slaves of fashion.

Helena. In the Pilgrim Good Intent, Fashion led the way to all sorts of wickedness.

Miss O. Fashion has led blindfold to the courses of the court of Louis XV. and though now comparatively harmless, going after her may at any time become a 'following the multitude to do evil.'

Audrey. And yet one must follow fashion in some degree.

Miss O. So as not to be singular in indifferent matters, but resting where any harm begins, for even in the best of times, fashion always has some touchstone of this sort, some usage verging on impropriety.

Helena. Are you thinking of waltzing?

Miss O. Not condemning individuals who have been bred up to think it a matter of course, but I do lament the custom, and think it a real evil to girls, who at first have a sense of repugnance, but let this wear off, because habit is against them, and they feel neglected. And be it remembered that each who resists any prevailing propensity, makes it easier for some one else to do so, and not to forget her first thoughts.

Audrey. Then you do think it wrong?

Miss O. Not in such as have never felt it so. There is much meaning in honi soit qui mal y pense,' though not as usually translated. The shame is to those who see the evil, yet disregard it.

Audrey. The thought more than the action.

Miss O. Often there is harm in the action when there is no thought at all, only an impulse. Under this head come all those excitements that lead us beyond ordinary and becoming retenue.

Helena. May I say the word flirtation?

Miss O. I fear nothing else expresses the eagerness occasioned by such intercourse as you mean. It is right and natural for us to feel it an honour and delight to receive kindness and attention, but the danger is in intoxication by the pleasure, losing our guard over ourselves, or being bent on attracting and absorbing notice or admiration.

Helena. It seems so, base and unworthy to try to attract admiration.

Miss O. Stay till you come to the time of life before you judge hastily. These are rather the maiden's temptations than those of the girl. And indeed many of the things I have said apply to an age beyond yours, so that I have said them chiefly in the hope that you may learn to look at matters in a right light before your behaviour and opinions are in a manner in your own hands. And one thing further I should like to say. It is the tone of many books that you will meet with in after life, if you read much for amusement, to treat love as an absorbing and blinding passion, almost excusing any amount of deceit and disobedience; and they also speak of it as a contemptible and almost wicked thing to marry without such a feeling. Now I think we have but to look at the Marriage Service to see how vain and fallacious this is.

Helena. But surely it is wicked to marry without love. Miss O. True love is a beautiful and glorious thing when it is founded on reverence and tenderness, and does not run into idolatry, or into passion. It is one of the most precious things in the world, and one that does not end in the world. It may raise the heart to heavenly love, as Dante has taught us with his Beatrice. But this

is a boon that does not fall to the lot of all; and one thing may be taken as certain, that love which will not be patient and submissive, or that asks anything that cannot be granted with a safe conscience, is not the true love which makes man and woman partners and helpers together in the voyage of life.

Helena. And were you saying people should marry without it?

Miss O. They should not marry unless from their hearts they can vow to love, honour, and obey, and you see this implies both thorough esteem and affection. But I do not see that this is necessarily the love of romance, and as a fact, we know that many of the best wives had no choice, no acquaintance before marriage, so that they could never have felt it. I see you think this a very cold unpleasant doctrine, but I believe it is the sound one, and that the notion of a passion once in one's life is untrue and unsafe. Of course any preference for another person would make a marriage utterly wrong and unworthy, for the vows could not honestly be taken; so would any distaste, or want of esteem, especially if the choice were on motives of expediency alone. One look at the exhortation at the end of the Marriage Service shows how the mutual feeling of bride and bridegroom may be much more beautiful, tender, refined, and poetical than the wild earthly passion of romance; the wife looking on her husband as her head and lord, to be reverenced even as the emblem of Christ Himself—the husband looking on her, in her meekness and grace, as representing the glorious Church, not having 'spot or wrinkle or any such thing,' and then kneeling together to represent the great Last Supper, and look forward to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb to which both are bidden! Would not this both exalt and chasten the affection, and cast out all that was mean and worldly?

Helena. Yes, if people really thought about that ser

vice, they could hardly come to be married but in the right spirit-really loving and for right reasons.

Miss O. And bringing their true adorning.

Mary. Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.'

Helena. Does that forbid wearing of those things?

Miss O. No; it rather says that the meek and quiet spirit should be the adorning to which all the rest is in subordination. They may be worn, but not as the adorning.

Mary. Then it is not wrong to dress nicely?

Miss O. Think of the history of dress.

Helena.

"The art of dress did ne'er begin

Till Eve our mother learnt to sin.'

Miss O. Shame is the portion of sin, so we have to submit to the humiliation from which the brutes are exempt. But those first coats, the skins of the victims sacrificed, as some imagine, typified the robe mercifully thrown over our bare and naked soul-the wedding garment, the robe of righteousness. So dress is ennobled, as also by its making part of the festal array at times of rejoicing and thus too is the spirit of personal display chastened. Indeed this commandment is so far concerned with dress, that it condemns all that is worn with the absolute purpose of attracting the eye.

Audrey. O yes, that is shocking!

Miss O. And very different from trying to please our nearest friends by our appearance. Next comes the need of avoiding notoriety, either by finery or meanness, unbecoming our purse or station, and above all, the rule of decency-that dress should do its work in veiling us. Fashion is almost always going in some way or other to