Page:Letters of Life.djvu/135

Rh and be so happy, and grow wiser too, all at the same time, is a very grand business. So good-bye for the present. Be a good girl, and mind every word your mother says."

The confidence of our parents in us was not misplaced. We were allowed the frequent intercourse of walks amid the varied and pleasant scenery of our native place, and of short evening visits. Conversation between the sexes was social and friendly, though the established manner might seem at this time that of the most distant politeness. To press the hand would have been a thing inadmissible, and to walk arm in arm was considered as an announcement of matrimonial engagement. I mention not these minutiæ as examples, but traits of the times. And looking back upon them through the lapse of years, I think it better to settle in the minds of young people that true basis of propriety and delicacy which will make them a "law to themselves," than to keep watch over them like a sentinel, or divide the sexes as though they were mutual adversaries. Those whom God has ordained to walk together through life's changeful day, it would seem ill-judged and useless for "man to put asunder," through the whole of its fair morning.

Dancing, it will be perceived, was one of our prime forms of entertainment. At a period when the