DAUGHTERS 335 



How many years ago it is since John Stuart Mill 

 wrote : ' When will education consist, not in repressing 

 any mental faculty or power, from the uncontrolled action 

 of which danger is apprehended, but in training up to its 

 proper strength the corrective and antagonistic power ? ' 

 This is only very old wisdom in other words, as it is 

 Aristotle who says that true virtue is placed at an equal 

 distance between the opposite vices. 



This quoting the wisdom of others you perhaps will 

 think very cheap philosophy. It is better, however, than 

 trying, like Sydney Smith, to write a book of maxims, and 

 failing to do so, as he himself says he never got further 

 than the following : ' Towards the age of forty, women 

 get tired of being virtuous and men of being honest.' I 

 must, all the same, admit that there are many less true 

 sayings than this one. 



A tendency of the present day is towards a kind of 

 hardness at any rate, outwardly. It is not the fashion to 

 be low-spirited, and for a woman to cry in public is thought 

 a shame. I confess I think there is a certain danger in 

 the cultivation of qualities in women that bring forth a 

 sort of glittering brightness which gives out light, not 

 heat, and therefore fails to warm. Perhaps this suppres- 

 sion is the very thing that helps to encourage one of the 

 well-known complications of family life namely, friend- 

 ships. The difficulty follows us through life, as we all 

 know how hard it often is to appreciate our friends' 

 friends. This, however, is not of much importance, as 

 the friends of our friends we can more or less avoid 

 without discourtesy. But with the friends of our near 

 relations the matter assumes considerable importance, 

 and we absolutely owe it to them to treat their friends 

 with extreme courtesy and kindness, however little 

 may be our sympathy towards them, or however critically 

 we may judge them. 



