96 THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 



I count a well-grown, well-behaved, and well-educated 

 woman, as the very blossom of creation. She was the 

 last made, reserved for the last, because best. As there 

 is nothing so good and beautiful in the world as a good 

 woman, so there is nothing so bad as a spoiled woman. 

 And now I am sorry to say, that very many girls are ut 

 terly spoiled. They are not well balanced and well adapt 

 ed to the work that woman has to do. The most are 

 brought up with such notions that they go through life 

 discontented and unhappy. 



There is Deacon Smith s daughter Eliza a fair sample 

 of the kind of bringing up I mean. They are very good 

 people over there, but they seem to forget that children 

 have got to grow up, and can t be playthings forever. 

 They did not teach her to do any thing, when she was a 

 little girl. She pretended to go to school, but it was only 

 when she took a notion to go. There was no habit of 

 study fixed, and so she got discouraged, and disgusted 

 with all kinds of books that required any thinking. She 

 had as little discipline of body as of mind, could not sew 

 well, did not know how to make up a bed, or to darn a 

 stocking, could not broil a fish, or boil a pudding. Some 

 how, her mother seemed to think these every-day matters 

 were not worth attending to. She said she was going to 

 make a lady of Eliza, and marry her off to some rich man, 

 who would not want a wife that knew how to work. She 

 was going to have her &quot;larn the ornamentals,&quot; as she 

 called them, music, painting, embroidery, dancing, and 

 such like. Sally used to say that she did not know enough 

 about the lessons to last her over night, when she left the 

 academy, and I do not think she has learned much more 

 about the common branches since. She was sent oif to a 

 fashionable boarding school in your city, when she was 

 fifteen, where they do nothing but put the polish on to 

 young women. But I should like to know what is the 

 use trying to polish a woman, before you have got a worn- 



