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Excerpt from Advice to Young Ladies on Their Duties and Conduct in Life False views of life every where prevail. We meet with them in our daily intercourse, in the social circle, and in books. From these flow many and various errors in life, the effects of which are often felt when it is too late to remedy them. And too frequently it happens that the sad experiences of a whole lifetime fail to correct the original error, or give the ability to guard, by right precepts, the young and inexperienced. It is from this reason, that, in giving advice, many persons, who have attained an advanced age, urge the opposite extreme of their own early life as the true mode of conduct. The foundation of all error, in regard to life, lies in a single misconception that of imagining self to be the centre, instead of clearly under standing that each individual is only a part of a great whole, a member of a common body. This is a truth so essential to the well-being of society, and to the happiness of each individual. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Anglo-Americans wrestled with some profound cultural contradictions as they shifted from the hierarchical and patriarchal society of the seventeenth-century frontier to the modern and fluid class democracy of the mid-nineteenth century. How could traditional inequality be maintained in the socially leveling environment of the early colonial wilderness? And how could nineteenth-century Americans pretend to be equal in an increasingly unequal society? Bowing to Necessities argues that manners provided ritual solutions to these central cultural problems by allowing Americans to act out--and thus reinforce--power relations just as these relations underwent challenges. Analyzing the many sermons, child-rearing guides, advice books, and etiquette manuals that taught Americans how to behave, this book connects these instructions to individual practices and personal concerns found in contemporary diaries and letters. It also illuminates crucial connections between evolving class, age, and gender relations. A social and cultural history with a unique and fascinating perspective, Hemphill's wide-ranging study offers readers a panorama of America's social customs from colonial times to the Civil War.