Serious Hours of a Young Lady | Page 4

propriety,
compels her to seek in a more fashionable, a more numerous, and
consequently an unsuitable society, distractions or pastimes for which
she is not made, and which recreate neither body, nor mind, nor heart.
The feverish agitation and insatiable thirst for enjoyment which seem to
prevail among all ages and classes of the present day is enigmatical.
Life now-a-days must be passed in a state of constant excitement. The
peaceful calm productive of a modest and pure life appear to the
imagination like a monotonous and disdainful sleep. The young girl
herself has scarcely left the paternal home in which she passed her
youthful days when she dreams of the pleasing emotions and
incomparable joys promised her by a flashy and fashionable life. The

examples which come under her notice wherever she goes or wherever
she turns her eyes,--the language which she hears, and the very air
which she breathes,--all give her, as it were, a foretaste of the false
pleasures which now fascinate her imagination.
This is, most assuredly, one of the worst signs of our time. Up to the
present day women, for the most part, faithful to their vocation and to
the duties of their station in life, have carefully preserved in the family
circle that sacred fire of Christian virtue which forms magnanimous
souls, and that piety which produces saints. Their hearts, like the Ark of
the Covenant, have preserved intact those tables of the divine law
which admonish men of their duties, and inspire them with a firm hope.
They have not fixed their hearts on the vain and frivolous joys of earth;
no, heaven was their aim. Preserved from the contagion of worldly
interests and desires, their thoughts feasted on elevated and heavenly
objects. What will become of society if, deprived of the resources it
found in their virtues, it meets with no other barrier on the steep
declivity down which it is being impelled by cupidity and the love of
pleasure? What will be the fate of future generations if they are not
sanctified in the sanctuary of the family by the benevolent influence of
woman, and fortified against the seductions of vice by that odor of
grace and sanctity which the heart of a Christian mother exhales?
Be not discouraged at the sight of difficulties that hover over the
horizon of the future; on the contrary, they should inspire you with
greater courage and energy. The less help you will obtain from trusted
sources of reliance, the more earnestly should you seek in God and
yourself what you look for in vain elsewhere. You may expect to see
diminish, from day to day, the number of those saintly souls from
whom you could obtain advice, support or light.
For you, perhaps, like many others, life will be a desert which you must
traverse almost alone, without meeting a single soul to reach you a
helping hand in your necessities and trials. Being about to set out on
this pilgrimage of life, which will perhaps be long, fatiguing and
painful, be supplied with an ample provision of strength, patience,
virtue and energy. And, if happily deceived in your fears, you find the
road which leads to eternity smooth under your feet, you will at least
have the merit of having been wise in your conduct, for not less moral
strength is required to bear the happiness of prosperity than the

misfortune of adversity. Happiness here below is something so
extremely perilous to man's eternal welfare that few can taste it without
injury to their souls. Hence, in order to guard against its fatal influence,
not less preparation, nor less time, nor less efforts, are required than to
suffer the privations imposed by adversity, for experience proves that
the former is more destructive than the latter to the work of eternal
salvation.

CHAPTER II
.
ILLUSIONS OF YOUTH, VALUE OF TIME AT THIS PERIOD OF
LIFE.
The age of youth is the age of illusions, ardent desires, and fanciful
hopes. Youth is like a fairy whose magical wand evokes the most
graceful images and the most alluring phantoms. This ignorance of the
doleful realities concealed in the future is a gift of divine goodness
which, in order that life might not be too bitter, casts a beneficent veil
over the sorrows that await us; God screens the future from us to let us
enjoy the present. Far be it from me to remove this veil which renders
you such kind service. But, apart from this screen which the good God
has placed between you and the miseries of this life, there is another of
a darker and heavier shade, fabricated by the imagination, and which it
draws with a perfidious complacency over the object which it behooves
us the most to know and avoid--a