As the wife-mother grows older she is kept in touch
with youth, and with the world, while the opportunities for close
companionship with the young lessen as a single woman passes forty,
unless she makes herself especially adaptable, agreeable, and
sympathetic.
And this is what I want you to do. At twenty-four it is none too soon to
begin planning for a charming maturity.
If you are determined upon a life of celibacy, determine also to be the
most wholesome, and normal, and all around liberal, womanly spinster the
world has ever seen.
Peace and happiness to you in your chosen lot.
To Mrs. Charles Gordon
_Concerning Her Sister and Her Children_
No, my dear Edna, I do not think it strange that you should seek advice
on this subject from a woman who has no living children.
It seems to me no one is fitted to give such unbiased counsel regarding
the training of children as the woman of observation, sympathy, and
feeling, who has none of her own.
Had I offspring, I would be influenced by my own successes, and
prejudiced by my own failures, and unable to put myself in your place,
as I now do.
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