Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/168

160 the fruit. He cannot know her as a man ought to know the woman who becomes his wife, nor can she possibly know him as a woman ought to know the man she marries. Viewing the matter, then, in any light you please, the acceptance of a lover before twenty involves a great risk.

If to accept a lover before this age be, then, a hazardous thing, the permission of any marked attentions from any particular young man is unwise. Better treat all alike, and endeavor to feel for all alike; that is, as nearly as it can be done. Of course there must and will be preferences; but let these be the preferences of your taste and judgment, not of your heart. Thus, holding your affections free at this most important age, when the mind is first looking out intelligently upon the world, you will acquire a clearness of mental vision, a power of discrimination, and an insight into character, otherwise unattainable. But, if you permit yourself to fall in love, the balance of your mind is gone; you see nothing, you hear nothing, you feel nothing, that does not in some way connect itself with the object of your affections. All improvement of the mind ceases; the judgment, not yet arrived at its full stature, ceases to grow, and hardens into a diminutive form; your powers of discrimination expand no farther. You stop where you are, and rarely, if ever, make a