346 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN 



employment that makes her daily duties tiresome and 

 hateful to her, she is yielding to a form of self-indulgence 

 which more or less feeds her vanity and robs her home 

 and her children of that which is the most vivifying 

 portion of herself and of the one most likely to call forth 

 from them both admiration and esteem. 



This to many will be a hard saying, as it means 

 leaving the higher employment of women to those who 

 are most free from natural duties ; that is, generally, to 

 the unmarried, who for that very reason are in some 

 ways the least understanding of our sex. 



Mothers and fathers should never lose sight of the 

 fact, as their daughters grow up, that confidence is only 

 likely to begin when given first by parents to children, from 

 the old to the young. Sympathy is not the consequence 

 of confidences, but the magnet that attracts them ; so 

 by confiding in our children, we may fail to get their 

 sympathy, but we are always able to give them ours. 



I think that mothers might remind their sons and 

 daughters, especially when they are grown up, how very 

 much the old like receiving the attention of the young, 

 and seeing that the young have no fear of them ; for I do 

 not doubt that, if young people really believed this, they 

 would probably pay these attentions more often, with 

 both advantage and interest to themselves. There is a 

 great deal to be got out of the experience and memories 

 of those much older than ourselves, if we can only make 

 them realise how much we wish both to hear and to learn. 



In the management of house and children, as in a 

 larger rule, let us remember that liberalism is a frame of 

 mind which has for its root the simple morality of doing 

 unto others as you would they should do unto you. 



It is a very doubtful question whether, in the houses 

 of the fairly wealthy, the daughters can be of very much 

 help to the mother unless she herself finds that she has 



