“I just wanted to give her a little polish before taking her to Washington, where we are going to spend the next winter,” interrupted her mother. “So I took her with me to New York, to let her see European manners. We reside in T***, rather a little out of the way of society.”
“I am sure Ma is very kind,” said Susan. “I don’t know anybody in T***, nor do I want to know anybody there. I never associated with any but the New York girls at the Misses ***; I was quite popular, and always belonged to their first sets.”
“I am sure of that,” said the mother. “Everybody that sees Susan likes her.”
I put my hand upon my heart.
“I only trust to Heaven that she will marry a gentleman capable of appreciating her education”—(here the young lady applied her handkerchief to her face, and appeared to be very much embarrassed,)—“and not a man without taste for literature or science, whom she could neither love nor respect, and who would be no sort of company to her.”
I trusted her amiable daughter would never be so horribly deceived.
“And yet it is so difficult to judge of men in these times, especially in New York, where young men keep their knowledge as secret as their cash, and have generally credit for more than they are worth,” interrupted my friend sympathisingly.
“Ah me!” sighed the old lady; “it did not use to be so when my husband was alive. There was not one girl out of ten of my acquaintance knew a word of Latin and mathematics; and yet they all married respectable men, who were no mathematicians either, and brought up their children in a right Christian manner. But they say this is the progress of education; and I do not wish my daughter to be inferior to other girls. Boys don’t cost half so much; they learn everything they want at the counting-room.”
“And what they learn there sticks to them as long as they live,” added my friend.
Here mother and daughter were silent; and my friend, seizing the opportunity, took my arm, and led me to another part of the room, where my companion of the dinner-table was sitting alone, reading “The Last Days of Pompeii.”