A GOOD EXAMPLE.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 43, 25 November 1871, Page 3

A GOOD EXAMPLE.

An English paper mentions that the Princess Mary of Teck and her husband, arc devoting their means and their efforts :•> save and reclaim young girls from all of vice, and are erecting a village for tin r reception in a sequestered part of Surrey, where the girls will be trained to habits of industry, under the direction of a matron, and amidst the healing and purifying influences of nature. Here is an example which might be copied by somo of our wealthy ladies with advantage to the objects of their solicitude, and with even greater advantage to themselves. For it cannot be denied, we think, that tho lives which very many of them lead are a burden and a weariness to them. All forms of pleasure and excitement arc tried, but they produce the same result—disapointment or satiety. Balls, parties, novel reading, picnics, “) evenings at home,” amateur theatricals, are suceesivcly engaged in, and the game is pronounced to be not worth tho candle. Even the ostentatious rivalries of those who deny themselves no gratification that money can purchase, are productive of envy, heartburning, and jealousy. If Mrs A. spends 30 guineas on a dress, she is presently thrown in the shade by Mrs 8., who has imported one from Paris that cost 50 ; Mrs C.’s diamonds are outshone by Mrs D.’s ; Mrs E.’s drawing room, with its elegant decorations, is eclipsed by the sumptuously furnished apartment of Mrs F.; Mrs G. has the mortification of seeing Mrs ll.’s daughter cany off the matrimonial prize she had hoped to secure for Miss G.; and Mrs I. is disgusted at getting only four square dances at the assembly ball, when Mrs J. stood up for as many as six round ones. And so life resolves itself into a dreary round of asperations that are never fulfilled, aud of artificial excitements generating nothing but dissatisfaction aud lassitude. Health is enfeebled, tho temper is soured, the spirits are depressed, the face if permaturely lined and pinched, and the matron of the period finds vent for the acerbity of her feelings in propagating censorious critisms on her neighbors. In the pursuit of an illusory aud elusive happiness, they overlook and lose the attainable reality, which could bo easily arrived at by simple living, homely pleasures, and the cultivation and practice of those moral principles which are tho strength and beauty of a woman’s character. And all this while society is being corrupted and depraved by evils which the active benevolence and considerate forethought of women could do so much to mitigate or cure ; and what with vice at one end of the scale, and folly, frivolity, and extravagance at the other, womanhood threatens to lose the reverence and respect which were formerly its right, but which will soon be offered to it only as a matter of courtesy based upon traditions of the past.— Australasian.