Who has held the first
place in your thoughts, filled your soul, and influenced your life?
Was she the most beautiful of your acquaintances, the radiant
vision that dazzled your boyish eyes? Has she not rather been some
gentle, quiet woman whom you hardly noticed the first time your
paths crossed, but who gradually grew to be a part of your life -
to whom you instinctively turned for consolation in moments of
discouragement, for counsel in your difficulties, and whose welcome
was the bright moment in your day, looked forward to through long
hours of toil and worry?
In the hurly-burly of life we lose sight of so many things our
fathers and mothers clung to, and have drifted so far away from
their gentle customs and simple, home-loving habits, that one
wonders what impression our society would make on a woman of a
century ago, could she by some spell be dropped into the swing of
modern days. The good soul would be apt to find it rather a far
cry from the quiet pleasures of her youth, to "a ladies' amateur
bicycle race" that formed the attraction recently at a summer
resort.
That we should have come to think it natural and proper for a young
wife and mother to pass her mornings at golf, lunching at the club-
house to "save time," returning home only for a hurried change of
toilet to start again on a bicycle or for a round of calls, an
occupation that will leave her just the half-hour necessary to slip
into a dinner gown, and then for her to pass the evening in dancing
or at the card-table, shows, when one takes the time to think of
it, how unconsciously we have changed, and (with all apologies to
the gay hostesses and graceful athletes of to-day) not for the
better.
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