wife. But looking back now on all, I deliberately say that no more fatal
blunder can be made than to train a girl to womanhood in ignorance of all
life's duties and burdens, and then to let her face them for the first
time away from all the old associations, the old helps, the old refuge on
the mother's breast. That "perfect innocence" maybe very beautiful, but
it is a perilous possession, and Eve should have the knowledge of good
and of evil ere she wanders forth from the paradise of a mother's love.
When a word is never spoken to a girl that is not a caress; when
necessary rebuke comes in tone of tenderest reproach; when "You have
grieved me" has been the heaviest penalty for a youthful fault; when no
anxiety has ever been allowed to trouble the young heart--then, when the
hothouse flower is transplanted, and rough winds blow on it, it droops
and fades.

The spring and summer of 1867 passed over with little of incident, save
one. We quitted Harrow, and the wrench was great. My brother had left
school, and had gone to Cambridge; the master, who had lived with us for
so long, had married and had gone to a house of his own; my mother
thought that as she was growing older, the burden of management was
becoming too heavy, and she desired to seek an easier life. She had saved
money enough to pay for my brother's college career, and she determined
to invest the rest of her savings in a house in St. Leonard's, where she
might live for part of the year, letting the house during the season. She
accordingly took and furnished a house in Warrior Square, and we moved
thither, saying farewell to the dear Old Vicarage, and the friends loved
for so many happy years.

At the end of the summer, my mother and I went down to Manchester, to pay
a long visit to the Roberts's; a very pleasant time we passed there, a
large part of mine being spent on horseback, either leaping over a bar in