Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/158

150 held, and accept an offer that may entail upon her a lifetime of regrets, perhaps of misery.

It will, likewise, almost always happen that a young lady will be judged of by the company she keeps. A man of strict integrity and virtue will be very apt to think lightly of any one at whose house he meets a person that he knows to be bad, especially if he seem to be on good terms there; and he will also be very apt to visit less frequently than would otherwise be the case. Thus, for want of sufficient firmness, it may be, to repel the advances of a bad man, a young lady may have to give up the benefits of the society of a good man—a consequence that she should be most careful to avoid.

In selecting from her casual acquaintances those that she feels willing and desirous of admitting to the privilege of visiting her on terms of social intimacy, a young lady should be careful that brilliant qualities of mind, a cultivated taste, and superior conversational powers, do not overcome her virtuous repugnance to base principles and a depraved life; or cause her to forget that these may exist under the most polished exterior. Those who possess sterling qualities of mind are not always as highly gifted as some other, and often, at first, seem very dull and very uninteresting persons. Their silent and close