Not that she is illogical; but she usually sees
through, without observing the steps in the process which a boy must
discern before he can comprehend the subject presented to his mind. In
the use of the eye, the ear, the voice, and in the appropriation of
whatever may be commanded without the highest exercise of the reasoning
and reflective faculties, she is incomparably superior. She accepts
moral truth without waiting for a demonstration, and she obeys the law
founded upon it without being its slave. She instinctively prefers good
manners to faulty habits; and, in the requirements of family, social,
and fashionable life, she is better educated at sixteen than her brother
is at twenty. She is an adept in one only of the vices of the
school--whispering--and in that she excels. But she does not so readily
resort to the great vice--the crime of falsehood--as do her companions
of the other sex. I call falsehood the great vice, because, if this were
unknown, tardiness, truancy, obscenity, and profanity, could not thrive.
Holmes has well said that "sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle
that will fit them all."
In many primary and district schools the habits and manners of children
are too much neglected. We associate good habits and good manners with
good morals; and, though we are deceived again and again, and
soliloquize upon the maxim that "all is not gold that glitters," we
instinctively believe, however often we are betrayed.
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