Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/104

 trust the Lord; that's all we can do after we've done all we can do ourselves. Let mothers take this great truth into consideration and consider on it; surround your young girls with good society, and when I say good I don't mean necessarily rich, but good, honest, and reliable, then you can set down in your chair and rest, knowin' that whatever is the Lord's will to happen won't bring grief and shame to your heart. If it is His will to have your girl a bachelor maid, thank God and take courage, if it is His will to have her unite her fate to a companion, why accept it as His will and make the best on't, but 'tennyrate and anyway, don't, don't let her marry a shack, and to insure that don't let a shack come hangin' round.

Well, everything seemed to be goin' as I wanted it to go. Considerin' the Le Flam eppisode, I couldn't act exactly as I would if I had took her fresh from the cradle. In them latter circumstances I would impress agin and agin on a girl's mind how many avenoos there wuz to walk in besides the matrimonial one—broad, glorious avenoos full of helpful and grand possibilities. But the Le Flam eppisode had hampered me, and so, as I say, everything seemed to be goin' as I wanted it to. And yet anon or oftener I had a feelin' that if Dora couldn't be broke for good of her foolish ways—foolishness nurtured and fostered by Albina Ann—I didn't want Dr. Phillip's life spilte. And then agin a good deal of the time I noticed her sweet disposition and put a long white mark on that; her readiness to fall into better ways, when she found 'em out—another long white mark.

As for his likin' for her, I felt that I needn't mark that, for he had done it himself. And if she didn't