" [1--D. Urquhart.] It
is useless to insist on this, it is known and admitted by almost all,
but the remedy or the preventive is hard to apply, demanding such
constant self-sacrifice on the part of parents that all are not ready to
practise it; it is so much easier and it looks at first sight so kind to
let children have their way. So kind at first, so unselfish in
appearance, the parents giving way, abdicating their authority, while
the young democracy in the nursery or school-room takes the reins in
hand so willingly, makes the laws, or rather rules without them, by its
sovereign moods, and then outgrows the "establishment" altogether,
requires more scope, snaps the link with home, scarcely regretting, and
goes off on its own account to elbow its way in the world. It is
obviously necessary and perhaps desirable that many girls should have to
make their own way in the world who would formerly have lived at home,
but often the way in which it is done is all wrong, and leaves behind on
both sides recollections with a touch of soreness.
For those who are practically concerned with the education of girls the
question is how to attain what we want for them, while the force of the
current is set so strongly against us. We have to make up our minds as
to what conventions can survive and fix in some way the high and
low-water marks, for there must be both, the highest that we can attain,
and the lowest that we can accept.
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