90 INDIAN HOSPITALITY. WOMEN. estimable? Would you be blest in making yourself a blessing? Would you receive a heavenly charm to heighten your beauty, cover your defects, and sanctify all your accomplishments? Above all things, would you be approved in the sight of Him whose favor is worth more than worlds on worlds? Seek the fullness of perfect love; give your heart unhesitatingly, unreservedly to the influence of grace; possess that "meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price." The useful social qualities and influence of religion are urged even in the scriptures as motives to religious reflection and improvement. And with Paul's appeal of this kind, fair reader, I take my leave of you, praying that you will make a personal application of it to yourself. "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." INDIAN HOSPITALITY. The virtue of hospitality in India, as elsewhere, prevails most in the wilder and more unfrequented districts. "I sometimes frequented places," says Forbes, "where the natives had never seen an European, and were ignorant of every thing concerning us; there I beheld manners and customs simple as were those in the patriarchal age; there, in the very style of Rebecca, and the damsels of Mesopotamia, the Hindoo villagers treated me with that artless hospitality so delightful in the poems of Homer, and other ancient records. "On a sultry day, near a Jinore village, having rode faster than my attendants, while waiting their arrival under a tamarind tree, a young woman came to the well; I asked for a little water, but neither of us having a drinking vessel, she hastily left me, as I imagined, to bring an earthen cup for the purpose, as I should have polluted a vessel of metal; but as Jael, when Sisera asked for water, gave him milk, and brought forth butter in a lordly dish,' so did this village damsel, with more sincerity than Heber's wife, bring me a pot of milk, and a lump of butter, on the delicate leaf of the banana, the lordly dish of the Hindoos. The former I accepted; on my declining the latter, she immediately made it up into two balls, and gave one to each of the oxen that drew my hackney. Butter is a luxury to these animals, and enables them to bear additional fatigue.” — Oriental Annual. Their gratitude is unim WOMEN. Women are formed for attachment. peachable. Their love is an unceasing fountain of delight to the man who has once attained and knows how to deserve it. But that very keenness of sensibility which, if well cultivated, would prove the source of man's highest enjoyment, may grow to bitterness and wormwood if he fail to attend to it, or abuse it. "I consider woman as a beautiful, romantic animal, which may be adorned with furs and feathers, pearls and silks. Tattler. So said the satirist of a past age; and have we, in these days of female schools and ladies' periodicals so far unfolded the intellect, and cultivated the moral nature of woman that she can take her station as a reasoning and reasonable creature, a being of mind, a candidate for immortality? Bourienne, in his memoirs of Napoleon, makes the following observation respecting Josephine, after her divorce from the Emperor: "The truth is, Josephine was extremely unhappy; and the most acceptable consolation her friends could offer her, was to weep with her. Yet such was her passion for dress, that after having wept for a quarter of an hour, she would dry her eyes to give audience to milliners and jewellers. The sight of a new hat would call forth all her feminine love of finery. One day, I remember, that, taking advantage of a momentary serenity, occasioned by an ample display of sparkling gewgaws, I congratulated her on the happy influence they exercised over her spirits, when she said-'My dear friend, I ought to be indifferent to this—but it is a habit.'” Now the indulgence of this love of finery, till it becomes a habit must, of course, require adulation and that constant admiration of beholders which decorated vanity always wants. Had Josephine formed, in her days of prosperity, the habit of reading, or writing, or exercising her talents and accomplishments in any manner independent of a drawing-room display, she would have found in her retirement, permanent resources against ennui and low spirits. But the habit of decorating her person for admiration, only made that retirement more intolerable, because the attentions and flattery her dress was designed to elicit could not be obtained. I intend no philippic against dress. No one can be more sensible of the charms of elegance, and the importance that ladies should always be well and neatly attired. But surely there is a difference between cultivating a taste for the graceful and becoming in costume, and the making that costume the chief object of our existence. Pope has very strikingly delineated the death-bed scene of a woman whose ruling passion had always been dress 92 THE BOOK OF BREVITIES. "Odious in woollen !* "Twould a saint provoke, For the credit of American women, I trust the character portrayed by the satirist has not often been found in our country; still I should not dare to say it is entirely false, or exaggerated. Not many years since, a lady of New England, who had been. celebrated for her beauty and the elegance of her attire on all occasions, had a sudden and dreadful shock of palsy, from which she had no hope of recovery. But she refused to admit the visits of her most intimate friends, and also of the clergyman, because, as she told her confidential nurse, she knew her features were distorted, and she could not be properly dressed to see company. She declared that her friends should never look on her with a stare of astonishment and pity that she would not hear the exhortations of the clergyman, or the vanity of worldly things, which he would apply personally to herself, and, she added as her final reason, "I will be thought of as a belle, till I am a corpse." It appears to me that Christian mothers do not sufficiently estimate the effect which dress and fashions, and the habit of considering these of the first importance to their respectability, exercise on the character of young ladies. Many good people condemn the expensiveness of fashion, who yet seem not aware that any thing more precious than silver and gold is lavished in this devotion of the heart, soul and mind, to dress. They do not take into their account the days, we may say years, consumed in this pursuit, without real improvement in any excellence whatsoever, even allowing, as we are willing to do, that a just taste in dress is an excellence. The lady who has devoted herself to the study of modes all her life, is no nearer reaching the standard of perfection in fashion, because its vagaries set all rules of taste at defiance. And she must follow the fashion. But to do this, she has wasted her time, lost opportunities for moral and mental improvement, neglected the education of her children, and the duties of benevolence, and most probably disturbed her husband's peace by her caprices, if she has not seriously embarrassed him by her extravagance. Bourienne asserts, that "the inconceivable mania of Josephine * The English were obliged by law to use woollen stuffs for grave clothes. for dress, was almost the sole cause of all her unhappiness, and that her thoughtless profusion occasioned permanent disorder in her household." The households of Emperors are not the only ones in which the thoughtless profusion, occasioned by a mania for dress, has produced permanent and irretrievable disorder. In our republic, the evils arising from this extravagance are serious, manifold and extensive. Will not the young ladies, for whom this work is especially designed, use their influence to uphold a more reasonable and refined taste in dress? The American ladies are now proverbial for their gayety and variety of dress, especially in the street and at church. A Frenchman, who had just arrived at New York, was astonished the first morning he walked forth in Broadway, to see the ladies in full costume, as if for a party. When he returned to his hotel, he inquired of a lady" Madame, where is your ball this morning? "The ball! what ball?" said the lady. "OI don't know what ball, but your people have one very strange custom; the ladies all go to ball before dinner; some ride, some walk-but all dress very fine for the ball! ha! ha! ha!-republican fashions very vulgar!" exclaimed the Frenchman. And he was right; for in no civilized country, except America, do reputable women walk or ride out in full dress. DOING GOOD. Would'st thou from sorrow find a sweet relief? Breathes freely its perfumes throughout the ambient air. And thou an angel's happiness shalt know; 94 GOVERNMENT OF THE TEMPER. GOVERNMENT OF THE TEMPER. BY MISS MARGARET COXE, Author of "The Young Lady's Companion." Some families insensibly acquire such a habit of contradicting one another, that it would almost seem as if they found a pleasure in thus acting. You cannot make a morning call, or share a meal with them, that is not embittered by petty bickering or angry arguments. The brothers are unreasonable, and the sisters impatient; the children are fretful and spoiled, and the mother irritable. It is incumbent on every daughter, "as a positive duty, to study to make home agreeable" to her parents and other members of the domestic circle to smooth down the little cross occurrences which will happen in the best regulated family — to study to cheer and comfort the declining years of her father and mother, and in every way to make them happy, consistently with her duty to God. Let every young woman, then, who has "named the name of Christ," whether she be wife, mother, daughter, or sister, bear in mind the infinite importance of having her temper in subjection to principle; let her not be commended for amiability abroad, and indulge without compunction, at home, in a suspicious, irritable, or perverse temper. She professes to practise self-command; let not her temper, then, be overcome by the awkwardness of a child, in tossing over the contents of its cup, either on her snowy table linen, or unsoiled dress. If the roll is badly baked, or the butter indifferent, how much will the evils be aggravated by what one of the old writers calls the unsavory sauce of ill humor! The occasions which I have specified for the display of bad temper in the domestic circle, may appear too trivial to enumerate; nevertheless, they are precisely an aggregate of such small sins, as most frequently sap the foundation of fireside enjoyments. I recollect reading an anecdote, some time since, in the journal of one of our popular tourists, which exhibited the disastrous effects that sometimes ensue from the want of self-government on trifling occasions. As far as I can remember, the story ran as follows: The American tourist encountered, while travelling in a coach in France, an elderly lady, who was a native of the country, and whose amiable and attractive manners, and good-humored endurance of fatigue and inconveniences, excited the commendation of the American. The prepossession was mutual; and, before the travellers separated, the matron threw out sundry hints for the practical guidance of her more youthful associate. |