Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/210

202 of another is placed in her hands, and which she will be tempted to sacrifice. We need not say what her duty is under such circumstances. The higher and better perceptions of every one will point to that.

As year after year passes by, a young lady will be brought into circumstances of closer and closer relationship with others, until at length she finds herself occupying the important position of a wife and mother, in which every act of her life, and almost every thought and word, must necessarily have either a good or a bad effect upon others. Self-denial and regard for the good of others she is now more than ever called upon to exercise; and in their exercise she can alone find true peace of mind. All turning of thought inward upon self as an object of primary consideration, all looking to the attainment of selfish ends and selfish gratification, will react upon her with a disturbing force; for she cannot do this without interfering in some way with the comfort or happiness of those in whose comfort and happiness her own is inextricably involved. The mother who neglects her child in the eager pursuit of some phantom of pleasure, or for the attainment of ease, will make that child unhappy, and herself doubly so; for she can no more expel from her mind a consciousness of having wronged that child, than