DEDICATION.
To the Young Ladies of America, the following sheets are affectionately inscribed.
Convinced of the many advantages of a good education, and the importance of improving those advantages; or of counterbalancing the want of them by exerting the mental powers which nature has bestowed; sensible, too, that the foundation of a useful and happy life must be laid in youth, and that much depends on the early infusion of virtuous principles into the docile mind, the author has employed a part of her leisure hours in collecting and arranging her ideas on the subject of female deportment.
How far she has succeeded in her design, the voice of a candid public will pronounce.
THE
BOARDING SCHOOL, &c.
On the delightful margin of the Merrimac, in one of the most pleasant and beautiful situations, which that fertile and healthful part of America affords, lived Mrs. Williams, the virtuous relict of a respectable clergyman.
She had two daughters, lovely and promising as ever parent could boast.
Mrs. Williams’ circumstances were easy. She possessed a little patrimony, to which she retired, after her husband’s decease; but a desire of preserving this for her children, and a wish to promote their advantage and enlarge their society, induced her to open a Boarding School.