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166 up yet, before the cause of Christ will prosper as they wish it in our native land. Never will the young servant cease to walk the streets with pride and satisfaction, in the exhibition of her newly purchased and fashionable attire, so long as she sees the young ladies in the family she serves, make it their greatest object to be fashionably dressed. They may say, and with some justice, that she has no right to regulate her conduct by their rule; they may reason with, and even reprove her too; but neither reasoning nor reproof will have the power to correct, so long as example weighs down the opposite scale. The vanity, the weakness of woman is the same in the kitchen as in the drawing-room; and if fashion is omnipotent in one, we can not expect it to be powerless in the other.

The question then has come to this—shall we continue to compete with our servants in dress, now that excess has become an evil; or shall we endeavour, for their sakes well as our own, to compete with them in self-denial, and in courage to do right? How can we pause—how can we hesitate in such a choice? Our decision once made on this important point, we shall soon find that fashion has been with us, as well as with them, a hard mistress. Yes, fashion, has often demanded of us the only sum of money we had been able to lay by for the needy poor; while with them it has wrung the father's scanty pittance from his hand, to supply the daughter with the trappings of her own disgrace. Fashion with us has often set on fire the flame of envy, and imbittered the shafts of ridicule; while with them it has been a fruitful source of deceit, dishonesty, and crime. Fashion with us has often broken old connexions, made us ashamed of valuable friends, and proud of those whose friendship was our bane; while with them it has been the means of introducing the young and the unwary to the companionship of the treacherous and the depraved.