Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/130

122 leave her room for some months; and when she did, it was with a constitution so impaired that she could not endure the slightest fatigue, nor bear the least exposure. Neither change of climate nor medicine availed any thing towards restoring her to health. In this feeble state, she married, about twelve months afterwards, the young man who had accompanied her to the ball. One year from the period at which that happy event took place, she died, leaving to stranger hands a babe that needed all her tenderest care, and a husband almost broken-hearted at his loss.

This is not merely a picture from the imagination, and highly colored. It is from nature, and every line is drawn with the pencil of truth. Hundreds of young women yearly sink into the grave, whose friends can trace to some similar act of imprudence, committed in direct opposition to the earnest persuasions of parents or friends, the cause of their premature decay and death. And too often other, and sometimes even worse, consequences than death, follow a disregard of the mother’s voice of warning.

Let no young lady, then, consider herself free to follow the impulse of her own feelings, because she is no longer under the authority of her parents. Let her remember that she is still to live