Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/50

42 persons who seem fully to understand the theory of right living, but who actually live in a manner very different from the ideal perfection which they presented with so much vividness and beauty. We remember once hearing a lady discourse with great eloquence on the use and power of order in all domestic arrangements. She spoke of its effects upon children, and drew a most glowing picture of a family in which order reigned in all things supreme. Some months afterwards, on becoming more intimately acquainted with this lady, who was a woman of some literary attainments, we accepted an invitation to take tea and spend an evening with her. The conversation alluded to was still fresh in our recollection, and we fully expected to see a family-model of neatness and order. But we were sadly disappointed. Worse behaved children, or a more disorderly household, we have never seen. The mother was a capital thinker, but that was all.