46 THE HOME. FARM AND BUSINESS CYCLOPEDIA. 



a four-story building, as they generally are. A poor, panting, weary girl 

 mounts these cruel steps to begin the incomprehensibly difficult service of 

 a modern school. " Why do you never go out at recess ? " said a teacher 

 to one of her pupils. " Because it hurts my heart so much to come up 

 the stairs," said the poor girl. " Oh ! but you should take exercise," said 

 the teacher ; " Look at Louisa's colour ! " 



That teacher knew as much of pathology as she did of Hottentot ; and 

 the pupil thus advised lies to-day a hopeless invalid on her bed. 



VI. 

 THE MANNERS OF YOUNG MEN. 



BUT, if the amenities of home are thus hopefully to direct our daughters 

 in the right way, what will they do for our sons ? 



Of one thing we may be certain, there is no royal road by which we can 

 make "good young men." The age is a dissolute one. The story of temptation 

 and indulgence is not new nor finished. The worst of it is that women feed 

 and tempt the indulgence of the age. Women permit a lack of respect. 

 Even young men who have been well brought up by their mothers become 

 careless when associating with girls who assume the manners and customs 

 of young men. And when it is added that some women in good society 

 hold lax ideas, talk in double entendre, and encourage instead of repres- 

 sing license, how can young men but be demoralized ? 



If women show disapproval of coarse ideas and offensive habits, men 

 drop those ideas and habits. A woman is treated by men exactly as she 

 elects to be treated. There is a growing social blot in our society. It is 

 the complacency with which women bear contemptuous treatment from 

 men. It is the low order at which they rate themselves, the rowdiness 

 of their own conduct, the forgiveness on the part of women of all mascu- 

 line sins of omission, that injures men's manners irretrievably. 



Fast men and women, untrained boys and girls, people without culture, 

 are doing much to injure modern society. They are injuring the immense 

 social force of good manners. Women should remember this part of their 

 duty. Men will not be chivalrous or deferential unless women wish them 

 to be. 



The amenities of home are everything to a boy. Without them very 

 few men can grow to be gentlemen. A man's religion is learned at his 

 mother's knee ; and often that powerful recollection is all that he cares 

 for on a subject which it is daily becoming more and more of a fashion 



