Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/159

Rh observation of all that is passing around them is not unfrequently mistaken for dulness, when, at the very time this false estimation of them has been formed, they have read thoroughly, and without mistaking a letter, the whole characters of those who had misjudged them. No matter how well educated a young man may be, nor how varied may be his powers of entertainment, no young lady should permit him to visit her familiarly, if she have undoubted evidence of his moral depravity. There is pollution in the very atmosphere that surrounds him. The more attractive his exterior, the more dangerous he is as a companion for a young and inexperienced girl, and the more likely to dazzle and bewilder her mind, and give her false estimates of things where true estimates are of the very first importance.

A young lady who admits to her acquaintance a well-educated, polished, accomplished, but cold-hearted, unprincipled man of the world, has placed herself in a dangerous position. She is no equal for such a one. He can, with a subtlety almost beyond the power of her detection, change her ordinary views of things, confuse her judgment, and destroy her rational confidence in the discriminating powers of her own mind; at the same time that, by the most judicious and