Manners, a word too often relegated to the past as savoring of the primness of
the ancient dame school or female seminary, are really minor or sometimes
major morals. They can express everything in the whole range of the impulsive
or emotional life. Now that we understand the primacy of movement over
feeling, we can appreciate what a school of bearing and repose in daily converse
with others means. I would revive some of the ancient casuistry of details, but
less the rules of the drawing-room, call and party, although these should not be
neglected, than the deeper expressions of true ladyhood seen in an exquisite,
tender and unselfish regard for the feelings of others. Women's ideal of
compelling every one whom they meet to like them is a noble one, and the
control of every automatism is not only a part of good breeding, but nervous
health.
Regularity should be another all-pervading norm. In the main, even though he
may have "played his sex symphony too harshly," E.H. Clark was right.
Periodicity, perhaps the deepest law of the cosmos, celebrates its highest
triumphs in woman's life. For years everything must give way to its thorough
and settled establishment. In the monthly Sabbaths of rest, the ideal school
should revert to the meaning of the word leisure. The paradise of stated rest
should be revisited, idleness be actively cultivated; reverie, in which the soul,
which needs these seasons of withdrawal for its own development, expatiates
over the whole life of the race, should be provided for and encouraged in every
legitimate way, for, in rest, the whole momentum of heredity is felt in ways most
favorable to full and complete development. Then woman should realize that to
be is greater than to do; should step reverently aside from her daily routine and
let Lord Nature work. In this time of sensitiveness and perturbation, when
anemia and chlorosis are so peculiarly immanent to her sex, remission of toil
should not only be permitted, but required; and yet the greatest individual liberty
should be allowed to adjust itself to the vast diversities of individual
constitutional needs. (See Chapter VII on this point.) The cottage home, which
should take the place of the dormitory, should always have special interest and
attractions for these seasons.
There should always be some personal instruction at these seasons during earlier
adolescent years. I have glanced over nearly a score of books and pamphlets that
are especially written for girls; while all are well meant and far better than the
ordinary modes by which girls acquire knowledge of their own nature if left to
themselves, they are, like books for boys, far too prolix, and most are too
scientific and plain and direct. Moreover, no two girls need just the same