What to Do with Daughters.
By Sel.
GIVE them a good, substantial, common education. Teach them to cook a good meal of victuals. Teach them how to darn stockings and sew on buttons. Teach them how to make shirts. Teach them how to make bread. Teach them all the mysteries of the kitchen, the dining-room, and the parlor. Teach them that the more one lives within his income the more he will save. Teach them that the further one lives beyond his income the nearer he gets to the poor-house. Teach them to wear calico dresses—and to do it like queens. Teach them that a rosy romp is worth fifty delicate consumptives. Teach them to wear thick, warm shoes. Teach them to foot up store bills. Teach them that God made them in his own image, and that no amount of tight lacing will improve the model. Teach them, every day, hard, practical common sense. Teach them self-reliance. Teach them that a good, steady mechanic, without a cent, is worth a dozen oily-pated loafers in broadcloth. Teach them not to have anything to do with intemperate and dissolute young men. Teach them accomplishments—music, painting, drawing—if you have the time and money to do it with. Teach them not to paint and powder. Teach them to say no, and stick to it; yes, and stick to it. Teach them to regard the morals, not the money, of their beaux. Teach them to attend to the essential requisites of a useful life—truth, honesty, uprightness—then at a suitable time to marry. Rely upon it, that upon your teaching depends in great measure the weal or woe of their after-life.—Sel.