Concerning Her Little Girl
How strange it seems that your daughter is ten years old.
It is such a brief hour since you wrote me you were eighteen and had entered Vassar. Having no children of my own to stand as milestones on life's highway, and keeping a very young heart in my breast all these years, it seems at times little less than impertinent in the children I have known to develop so rapidly into matrons and fathers.
I am glad for you that the doctor has reached the desirable goal where he can rest from his laborious profession for two years, and take that journey abroad you have so long contemplated. And I am glad that you feel the satisfaction you say you do, in never having left him alone for a whole season as you once thought of doing.
A satisfied conscience is a better comrade to journey along beside, than a remembered pleasure.
But now about Genevieve.
You tell me she is to be left with your sister, and that she will, for the first time, attend the public school.
You are right in thinking this will make her more American in spirit than an education gained through home teaching or private schools.
The girl who attends private schools only, is almost invariably inoculated with the serum of aristocracy.
She believes herself a little higher order of being than the children who attend public schools, and it requires continual association with people of broad common sense to counteract this influence. I know you and the doctor have exerted this influence, but your sister might not realize the necessity of making a special effort in that direction.