The Young Lady's Mentor by A Lady

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THE YOUNG LADY'S MENTOR

A Guide to the Formation of Character.
In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends

by

A LADY.

Philadelphia:
H.C. Peck & Theo. Bliss.

1852

PREFACE

The work which forms the basis of the present volume is one of the most
original and striking which has fallen under the notice of the editor.
The advice which it gives shows a remarkable knowledge of human
character, and insists on a very high standard of female excellence.
Instead of addressing herself indiscriminately to all young ladies, the
writer addresses herself to those whom she calls her "Unknown Friends,"
that is to say, a class who, by natural disposition and education, are
prepared to be benefited by the advice which she offers. "Unless a
peculiarity of intellectual nature and habits constituted them friends,"
she says in her preface, "though unknown ones, of the writer, most of
the observations contained in the following pages would be
uninteresting, many of them altogether unintelligible."

She continues: "That advice is useless which is not founded upon a
knowledge of the character of those to whom it is addressed: even were
the attempt made to follow such advice, it could not be successful."

"The writer has therefore neither hope nor wish of exercising any
influence over the minds of those who are not her 'Unknown Friends.'
There may, indeed, be a variety in the character of these friends; for
almost all the following Letters are addressed to different persons; but
the general intellectual features are always supposed to be the same,
however the moral ones may differ."

"One word more must be added. All of the rules and systems recommended
in these Letters have borne the test of long-tried and extensive
experience. There is nothing new about them but their publication."

The plan of the writer of the Letters enables her to give specific and
practical advice, applicable to particular cases, and entering into
lively details; whereas, a more general work would have compelled her to
confine herself to vague generalities, as inoperative as they are
commonplace.

The intelligent reader will readily appreciate and cordially approve of
the writer's plan, as well as the happy style in which it is executed.

To the "Letters to Unknown Friends" which are inserted entire, the
editor has added, as a suitable pendant, copious extracts from that
excellent work, "Woman's Mission," and some able papers by Lord Jeffrey,
the late accomplished editor of the Edinburgh Review.

Thus composed, the editor submits the work to the fair readers of
America, trusting that it will be found a useful and unexceptionable
"Young Lady's Mentor."

Contents

Contentment 7

Temper 31

Falsehood and Truthfulness 52

Envy 61

Selfishness and Unselfishness 74

Self-Control 93

Economy 117

The Cultivation of the Mind 137, 164

Amusements 193

The Influence of Women on Society 218

The Sphere of Woman's Influence 227

Education of Women 233

Love--Marriage 244

Literary Capabilities of Women 256

Ennui, and the Desire to be Fashionable 267

The Influence of Personal Character 270

On the Means of Securing Personal Influence 276

LETTER I.

CONTENTMENT.

It is, perhaps, only the young who can be very hopefully addressed on
the present subject. A few years hence, and your habits of mind will be
unalterably formed; a few years hence, and your struggle against a
discontented spirit, even should you be given grace to attempt it, would
be a perpetually wearisome and discouraging one. The penalty of past sin
will pursue you until the end, not only in the pain caused by a
discontented habit of mind, but also in the consciousness of its
exceeding sinfulness.

Every thought that rebels against the law of God involves its own
punishment in itself, by contributing to the establishment of habits
that increase tenfold the difficulties to which a sinful nature exposes
us.

Discontent is in this, perhaps, more dangerous than many other sins,
being far less tangible: unless we are in the constant habit of
exercising strict watchfulness over our thoughts, it is almost
insensibly that they acquire an habitual tendency to murmuring and
repining.

This is particularly to be feared in a person of your disposition. Many
of your volatile, thoughtless, worldly-minded companions, destitute of
all your holier feelings, living without object or purpose in life, and
never referring to the law of God as a guide for thought or action, may
nevertheless manifest a much more contented disposition than your own,
and be apparently more submissive to the decision of your Creator as to
the station of life in which you have each been placed.

To account for their apparent superiority over you on this point, it
must be remembered that it is one of the dangerous responsibilities
attendant on the best gifts of God,--that if not employed according to
his will, they turn to the disadvantage of the possessor.

Your powers of reflection, your memory, your imagination, all calculated
to provide you with rich sources of gratification if exercised in proper
directions, will turn into curses instead of blessings if you do not
watchfully restrain that exercise within the sphere of duty. The natural
tendency of these faculties is, to employ themselves on forbidden
ground, for "every imagination of man's heart is evil continually." It
is thus that your powers of reflection may only serve to give you a
deeper and keener insight into the disadvantages of your position in
life; and trivial circumstances, unpleasant probabilities, never dwelt
on for a moment by the gay and thoughtless, will with you acquire a
serious and fatal importance, if you direct towards them those powers of
reasoning and concentrated thought which were given to you for far
different purposes.

And while, on the one hand, your memory, if you allow it to acquire the
bad habits against which I am now warning you, will be perpetually
refreshing in your mind vivid pictures of past sorrows, wrongs, and
annoyances: your imagination, at the same time, will continually present
to you, under the most exaggerated forms, and in the most striking
colours, every possible unpleasantness that is likely to occur in the
future. You may thus create for yourself a life apart, quite distinct
from the real one, depriving yourself by wilful self-injury of the power
of enjoying whatever advantages, successes, and pleasures, your heavenly
Father may think it safe for you to possess.

Happiness, as far as it can be obtained in the path of duty, is a duty
in itself, and an important one: without that degree of happiness which
most people may secure for themselves, independent of external
circumstances, neither health, nor energy, nor cheerfulness can be
forthcoming to help us through the task of our daily duties.

It is indeed true, that, under the most favourable circumstances, the
thoughtful will never enjoy so much as others of that which is now
generally understood by the word happiness. Anxieties must intrude upon
them which others know nothing of: the necessary business of life, to be
as well executed as they ought to execute it, must at times force down
their thoughts to much that is painful for the present and anxious for
the future. They cannot forget the past, as the light-hearted do, or
life would bring them no improvement; but the same difficulties and
dangers would be rushed into heedlessly to-morrow, that were experienced
yesterday, and forgotten to-day; and not only past difficulties and
dangers are remembered, but sorrows too: these they cannot, for they
would not, forget.

In the contemplation of the future also, they must exercise their
imagination as well as their reason, for the discovery of those evils
and dangers which such foresight may enable them to guard against: all
this kind of thoughtfulness is their wisdom as well as their instinct;
which makes it more difficult for them than it is for others to fulfil
the reverse side of the duty, and to "be careful for nothing."[1]

To your strong mind, however, a difficulty will be a thing to be
overcome, and you may, if you only will it, be prudent and sagacious,
far-sighted and provident, without dwelling for a moment longer than
such duties require on the unpleasantnesses, past, present, and future,
of your lot in life.

Having thus seen in what respects your superiority of mind is likely to
detract from your happiness, in the point of the colouring given by your
thoughts to your life, let us, on the other hand, consider how this same
superiority may be so directed as to make your thoughts contribute to
your happiness, instead of detracting from it.

I spoke first of your reasoning powers. Let them not be exercised only
in discovering the dangers and disadvantages likely to attend your
peculiar position in life; let them rather be directed to discover the
advantages of those very features of your lot which are most opposed to
your natural inclinations. Consider, in the first place, what there may
be to reconcile you to the secluded life you so unwillingly lead.
Withdrawn, indeed, you are from society,--from the delightful
intercourse of refined and intellectual minds: you hear of such
enjoyments at a distance; you hear of their being freely granted to
those who cannot appreciate them as you could, (safely granted to them
for perhaps this very reason.) You have no opportunity of forming those
friendships, so earnestly desired by a young and enthusiastic mind; of
admiring, even at a reverential distance, "emperors of thought and
hand." But then, as a compensation, you ought to consider that you are,
at the same time, freed from those intrusions which wear away the time,
and the spirits, and the very powers of enjoyment, of those who are
placed in a more public position than your own. When you do, at rare
intervals, enjoy any intercourse with congenial minds, it has for you a
pleasurable excitement, a freshness of delight, which those who mix much
and habitually in literary and intellectual society have long ceased to
enjoy: while the powers of your own mind are preserving all that
originality and energy for which no intellectual experience can
compensate, you are saved the otherwise perhaps inevitable danger of
adopting, parrot-like, the tastes and opinions of others who may indeed
be your superiors, but who, in a copy, become wretchedly inferior to
your real self. Time you have, too, to cultivate your mind in such a
manner, and to such a degree, as may fit you to grace any society of
the kind I have described; while those who are early and constantly
engaged in this society are often obliged, from mere want of this
precious possession, to copy others, and resign all identity and
individuality. To you, nobly free as you are from the vice of envy, I
may venture to suggest another consideration, viz. the far greater
influence you possess in your present small sphere of intellectual
intercourse, than if you were mixed up with a crowd of others, most of
them your equals, many your superiors.

If you have few opportunities of forming friendships, those few are
tenfold more valuable than many acquaintance, among a crowd of whom,
whatever merits you or they might possess, little time could be spared
to discover, or experimentally appreciate them. The one or two friends
whom you now love, and know yourself beloved by, might, in more exciting
and busy scenes, have gone on meeting you for years without discovering
the many bonds of sympathy which now unite you. In the seclusion you so
much deplore, they and you have been given time to "deliberate, choose,
and fix:" the conclusion of the poet will probably be equally
applicable,--you will "then abide till death."[2] Such friends are
possessions rare and valuable enough to make amends to you for any
sacrifices by which they have been acquired.

Another of your grievances, one which presses the more heavily on those
of graceful tastes, refined habits, and generous impulses, is the very
small proportion of this world's goods which has fallen to your lot.
You are perpetually obliged to deny yourself in matters of taste, of
self-improvement, of charity. You cannot procure the books, the
paintings, you wish for--the instruction which you so earnestly desire,
and would so probably profit by. Above all, your eyes are pained by the
sight of distress you cannot relieve; and you are thus constantly
compelled to control and subdue the kindest and warmest impulses of your
generous nature. The moral benefits of this peculiar species of trial
belong to another part of my subject: the present object is to find out
the most favourable point of view in which to contemplate the
unpleasantness of your lot, merely with relation to your temporal
happiness. Look, then, around you; and, even in your own limited sphere
of observation, it cannot but strike you, that those who derive most
enjoyment from objects of taste, from books, paintings, &c., are exactly
those who are situated as you are, who cannot procure them at will. It
is certain that there is something in the difficulty of attainment which
adds much to the preciousness of the objects we desire; much, too, in
the rareness of their bestowal. When, after long waiting, and by means
of prudent management, it is at last within your power to make some
long-desired object your own, does it not bestow much greater pleasure
than it does on those who have only to wish and to have?

In matters of charity this is still more strikingly true--the pleasure
of bestowing ease and comfort on the poor and distressed is enhanced
tenfold by the consciousness of having made some personal sacrifice for
its attainment. The rich, those who give of their superfluities, can
never fully appreciate what the pleasures of almsgiving really are.

Experience teaches that the necessity of scrupulous economy is the very
best school in which those who are afterwards to be rich can be
educated. Riches always bring their own peculiar claims along with them;
and unless a correct estimate is early formed of the value of money and
the manner in which it can be laid out to the best advantage, you will
never enjoy the comforts and tranquillity which well-managed riches can
bestow. It is much to be doubted whether any one can skilfully manage
large possessions, unless, at some period or other of life, they have
forced themselves, or been forced, to exercise self-denial, and
resolutely given up all those expenses the indulgence of which would
have been imprudent. Those who indiscriminately gratify every taste for
expense the moment it is excited, can never experience the comforts of
competency, though they may have the name of wealth and the reality of
its accompanying cares.

Still further, let your memory and imagination be here exercised to
assist in reconciling you to your present lot. Can you not remember a
time when you wanted money still more than you do now?--when you had a
still greater difficulty in obtaining the things you reasonably desire?
To those who have acquired the art of contentment, the present will
always seem to have some compensating advantage over the past, however
brighter that past may appear to others. This valuable art will bring
every hidden object gradually into light, as the dawning day seems to
waken into existence those objects which had before been unnoticed in
the darkness.

Lastly, your imagination, well employed, will make use of your partial
knowledge of other people's affairs to picture to you how much worse off
many of those are,--how much worse off you might yourself be. You, for
instance, can still accomplish much by the aid of self-denial; while
many, with hearts as warm in charities, as overflowing as your own, have
not more to give than the "cup of cold water," that word of mercy and
consolation.

You may still further, perhaps, complain that you have no object of
exciting interest to engage your attention, and develop your powers of
labour, and endurance, and cleverness. Never has this trial been more
vividly described than in the well-remembered lines of a modern poet:--

"She was active, stirring, all fire--
Could not rest, could not tire--
To a stone she had given life!
--For a shepherd's, miner's, huntsman's wife,
Never in all the world such a one!
And here was plenty to be done,
And she that could do it, great or small,
She was to do nothing at all."[3]

This wish for occupation, for influence, for power even, is not only
right in itself, but the unvarying accompaniment of the consciousness of
high capabilities. It may, however, be intended that these cravings
should be satisfied in a different way, and at a different time, from
that which your earthly thoughts are now desiring. It may be that the
very excellence of the office for which you are finally destined
requires a greater length of preparation than that needful for ordinary
duties and ordinary trials. At present, you are resting in peace,
without any anxious cares or difficult responsibilities, but you know
not how soon the time may come that will call forth and strain to the
utmost your energies of both mind and body. You should anxiously make
use of the present interval of repose for preparation, by maturing your
prudence, strengthening your decision, acquiring control over your own
temper and your own feelings, and thus fitting yourself to control
others.

Or are you, on the contrary, wasting the precious present time in vain
repinings, in murmurings that weaken both mind and body, so that when
the hour of trial comes you will be entirely unfitted to realize the
beautiful ideal of the poet?--

"A perfect woman, nobly plann'd
To warn, to counsel, to command:
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill."[4]

Then, again, I would ask you to make use of your powers of reflection
and memory. Reflect what trials and difficulties are, in the common
course of events, likely to assail you; remember former difficulties,
former days or weeks of trial, when all your now dormant energies were
developed and strained to the utmost. You felt then the need of much
greater powers of mind and body than those which you now complain are
lying dormant and useless. Further imagine the future cases that may
occur in which every natural and acquired faculty may be employed for
the great advantage of those who are dear to you, and when you will
experience that this long interval of repose and preparation was
altogether needful.

Such reflections, memories, and imaginations must, however, be carefully
guarded, lest, instead of reconciling you to the apparent uselessness of
your present life, they should contribute to increase your discontent.
This they might easily do, even though such reflections and memories
related only to trials and difficulties, instead of contemplating the
pleasures and the importance of responsibilities. To an ardent nature
like yours, trials themselves, even severe ones, which would exercise
the powers of your mind and the energies of your character, would be
more welcome than the tame, uniform life you at present lead.

The considerations above recommended can, therefore, be only safely
indulged in connection with, and secondary to, a most vigilant and
conscientious examination into the truth of one of your principal
complaints, viz. that you have to do, like the Duke's wife, "nothing at
all."[5] You may be "seeking great things" to do, and consequently
neglecting those small charities which "soothe, and heal, and bless."
Listen to the words of a great teacher of our own day: "The situation
that has not duty, its _ideal_, was never yet occupied by man. Yes,
here, in this poor, miserable, pampered, despised actual, wherein thou
even now standest, here, or nowhere, is thy _ideal_; work it out,
therefore, and, working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the ideal is in
thyself; the impediment, too, is in thyself: thy condition is but the
stuff thou art to shape that same ideal out of--what matters whether the
stuff be of this sort or of that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be
poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the actual, and criest
bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this
of a truth,--the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here, or
nowhere,' couldst thou only see."

When you examine the above assertions by the light of Scripture, can you
contradict their truth?

Let us, however, ascend to a still higher point of view. Have we not
all, under every imaginable circumstance, a work mighty and difficult
enough to develope our strongest energies, to engage our deepest
interests? Have we not all to "work out our own salvation with fear and
trembling?"[6] Professing to believe, as we do, that the discipline of
every day is ordered by Infinite Love and Infinite Wisdom, so as best to
assist us in this awfully important task, can we justly complain of any
mental void, of any inadequacy of occupation, in any of the situations
of life?

The only work that can fully satisfy an immortal spirit's cravings for
excitement is the work appointed for each of us. It is one, too, that
has no intervals of repose, far less of languor or _ennui_; the labour
it demands ought never to cease, the intense and engrossing interest it
excites can never vary or lessen in importance. The alternative is a
more awful one than human mind can yet conceive: those who have not
fulfilled their appointed work, those who have not, through the merits
of Christ, obtained the "holiness without which no man shall see the
Lord,"[7] "must depart into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and
his angels."[8]

With a hell to avoid, and a heaven to obtain, do you murmur for want of
interest, of occupation!

In the words of the old story, "Look below on the earth, and then above
in heaven:" remember that your only business here is to get there; then,
instead of repining, you will be thankful that no great temporal work is
given you to do which might, as too often happens, distract your
attention and your labours from the attainment of life eternal. Having
been once convinced of the awful and engrossing importance of this "one
thing" we have to "do,"[9] you will see more easily how many minor
duties may be appointed you to fulfil, on a path that before seemed a
useless as well as an uninteresting one. For you would have now learned
to estimate the small details of daily life, not according to their
insignificance, not as they may influence your worldly fate, but as they
may have a tendency to mould your spirit into closer conformity to the
image of the Son.[10] You will now no longer inquire whether you have
any work to do which you might yourself consider suitable to your
capabilities and energies; but whether there is within your reach any,
the smallest, humblest work of love, contemned or unobserved before,
when you were more proud and less vigilant.

Look, then, with prayer and watchfulness into all the details of your
daily life, and you will assuredly find much formerly-unnoticed "stuff,"
out of which "your ideal" may be wrought.

You may, for instance, have no opportunity of teaching on an enlarged
scale, or even of taking a class at a Sunday-school, or of instructing
any of your poor neighbours in reading or in the word of God. Such
labours of love may, it is possible, though not probable, be shut out of
your reach: if, however, you are on the watch for opportunities, (and we
are best made quick-sighted to their occurrence in the course of the
day, by the morning's earnest prayer for their being granted to us,) you
may be able to help your fellow-pilgrims Zion-ward in a variety of small
ways. "A word in season, how good is it!" the mere expression of
religious sympathy has often cheered and refreshed the weary traveller
on his perhaps difficult and lonely way. A verse of Scripture, a hymn
taught to a child, only the visitor of a day, has often been blessed by
God to the great spiritual profit of the child so taught. Are not even
such small works of love within your reach?

Again, with respect to family duties, I know that in some cases, when
there are many to fulfil such duties, it is a more necessary and often a
more difficult task to refrain altogether from interfering in them. They
ought to be allowed to serve as a safety-valve for the energies of those
members of the family who have no other occupations: of these there will
always be some in a large domestic circle. Without, however,
interfering actively and habitually, which it may not be your duty to
do, are you always ready to help when you are asked, and to take trouble
willingly upon yourself, when the excitement and the credit of the
arrangement will belong exclusively to others? This is a good sign of
the humility and lovingness of your spirit: how is the test borne?

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