Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/190

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174
THE EDUCATOR

you." In the passivity of women, no less than in their refined duplicity, did this acute observer recognize the secret strength of sex.

A vastly different counsellor of youth was Mrs. West, who wrote a volume of "Letters to a Young Lady" (the young lady was Miss Maunsell, and she died after reading them), which were held to embody the soundest morality of the day. Mrs. West is as dull as Dr. Gregory is penetrating, as verbose as he is laconic, as obvious as he is individual. She devotes many agitated pages to theology, and many more to irrefutable, though one hopes unnecessary, arguments in behalf of female virtue. But she also advises a careful submission, a belittling insincerity, as woman's best safeguards in life. It is not only a wife's duty to tolerate her husband's follies, but it is the part of wisdom to conceal from him any knowledge of his derelictions. Bad he may be; but it is necessary to his comfort to believe that his wife thinks him good. "The lordly nature of man so strongly revolts from the suspicion of inferiority," explains this excellent monitress, "that a susceptible husband can never feel