Your mothers succeeded with you: you will succeed with your daughters.
But it is a shame to speak of those things that are done of you in secret, and I will forbear.

Thank God, the day will come--it may be thousands of years away--when there shall be no such things for a man to think of, any more than for a girl to shudder at! There is a purification in progress, and the kingdom of heaven _will_ come, thanks to the Man who was holy, harmless, undefined, and separate from sinners.

You have heard a little, probably only a little, about him at church sometimes.

But, when that day comes, what part will you have had in causing evil to cease from the earth?
There had been a time in the mother's life when she herself regarded her approaching marriage, with a man she did not love, as a horror to which her natural maidenliness--a thing she could not help--had to be compelled and subjected: of the true maidenliness--that before which the angels make obeisance, and the lion cowers--she never had had any; for that must be gained by the pure will yielding itself to the power of the highest.

Hence she had not merely got used to the horror, but in a measure satisfied with it; never suspecting, because never caring enough, that she had at the same time, and that not very gradually, been assimilating to the horror; had lost much of what purity she had once had, and become herself unclean, body and mind, in the contact with uncleanness.