The Young Lady's Counsellor by Daniel Wise

SELF-RELIANCE. 133
want of affeciion. Young ladies whose parents are
in liberal circumstances, whose wants are anticipated
by loving friends, are in great danger of growing
into a habit of depending wholly upon others.
They insensibly learn to lean upon the arm of parental
strength. They fail to acquire the power of
depending upon themselves. Nay, they dare not
contemplate the possibility of being compelled to do
so. They transfer their sense of dependence from
the father to the husband, and vainly hope that one
or the other may always be at hand with the means
and disposition to sustain them. They look upon
themselves as on the ivy whose tendrils cling for
support to the majestic oak or lofty crag ; forgetting
that the lightning may rend the crag or smite the
oak : then, what is left to the ivy but to trail in the
dust, to be
" Soiled beneath the common tread " ?
Now, though dependence upon others is more
natural and more fitting to woman than to man, —
though, in the providence of God, she generally finds