[Boston—Sunday, 30 April 1876]
Sunday morning quietly at home, getting up my lesson for the children this afternoon. With plans for Phila. and what I must wear coming in everywhere. What an endless and impertinent question this is to a woman. Sacred moments are invaded by it. I wonder if education might not give us a better training on this head—and yet what a harmonious spectacle is a well-dressed woman—and well-dressing is not accomplished either in a moment or by the help of a dressmaker. Some conception on the wearer’s part must go into it if there is to be a satisfactory result.
Macauley says speaking of the Benthamite training in its effect upon young men, they expected “the regeneration of mankind not from any direct action on the sentiments of unselfish benevolence and love of justice, but from the effect of educated intellect enlightening the Selfish feelings”. Surely the ongoing evil of our day seldom has been better expressed.
