Think of all the young couples that you know. How few of them are really in love with each other after the first year! They have bartered the best and most exquisite joy for such poor returns—and they could have kept their Heaven’s gift if they had only thought carefully over the things which are likely to destroy it.
I believe you play the piano most charmingly, Caroline—in an easy way which gives pleasure to everyone. Do not, when you marry, give this up and let it be relegated into the background, as so many girls do with their accomplishments. And if your husband should be one of those rich modern young men who seem to have no sense of balance or responsibility, but pass their lives rushing from one sport to another, try to curb his restlessness and teach him that a great position entails great obligations and that he must justify his ownership of it in the eyes of the people who now hold the casting vote in their inexperienced hands. I believe, from the little I know about politics, that I am a Conservative, Caroline—but, when I see an utter recklessness and indifference to their nation’s greatness and a wild tearing after pleasure apparently the only aims of young lives in the upper classes, it sickens me with contempt and sorrow that they should give the enemy so good a chance to blaspheme.
And as women by their gentleness, tact, and goodness influence affairs and governments and countries, through men, a thousand-fold more than the cleverest suffragettes could influence these things by securing votes for women—I do implore you, Caroline, when your turn comes to be the inspiration of some nice young husband, to use your power over him to make him truly feel the splendor of his inheritance in being an Anglo-Saxon, and his tremendous obligation to come up to the mark.
Now you will think I am becoming too serious, so I will say good-night, child.
Your affectionate Godmother,
E. G.