Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/32

24 and happy—be disgraceful, then we can understand why such ignorance is a matter of pride, but on no other supposition.

A singular error prevails to a very great extent, that there is something degrading in useful domestic employments. Some young ladies would almost as lief be detected in a falsehood, as discovered by their young acquaintances, especially of the other sex, in the performance of any household duty. It is no unusual thing to see them with ornamental needle-work in their hands; but you can never find them making a garment, or doing any work that is really needed in the family. The former is a pleasing pastime, but the latter is something useful, and the useful is esteemed vulgar and common, and, if engaged in at all, must be done so secretly that no one will have a suspicion of the fact.

Besides engaging in, and becoming thoroughly conversant with, domestic affairs, there is another matter which every young woman should seriously consider, be her condition in life what it may. In this country, more than in any other, mutability is stamped upon the form and features of society. The rich man of to-day is the poor man of to-morrow, and the poor man of to-day the rich man of to-morrow. There is no permanence, no stability. A man may count his