Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/225

214 I am convinced, that some do actually practise it unconsciously to themselves, and for this reason I am the more anxious to furnish them with a few hints, by which they may be better able to detect the follies of their own conduct.

In the first place, then, allow me to ask, why it is necessary, or even desirable, for young women to do more to please men than women? Their best friends, as friends only, will ever be found amongst their own sex. There is but one relation in life in which any of the men whom they meet with in mixed society can be anything to them; and surely they can have no thought of marrying half those whom they take more pains to please, than they take in their intercourse with their own sex. What then, can be the state of mind of her who exercises all her powers of fascination upon beings in whom she can have no deep, or real interest? She must have some strong motive, or why this total change in her behaviour, so that her female friends can scarcely recognize in her the same individual, who, an hour before, was moping, fretful, listless, and weary of herself, and them? She must have some strong motive, and it can be no other than one of these two— either to gain the admiration, or the affection, of all those whom she favours with the full exhibition of her accomplishments in the art of pleasing. If her motive be simply to gain their admiration, it is a blind and foolish mistake into which her vanity has betrayed her, to suppose that admiration is to be purchased by display, or to imagine that the open and undisguised claims she makes upon it, are not more calculated to disgust than attract.

But there remains the second, and stronger motive; and this would seem, at first sight, to demand more delicacy of treatment, since it is generally considered an amiable propensity in woman's nature to desire to be beloved. Let her, however, be honest, sincere, and honourable, in the