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whose intelligence and virtues have inspired admiration and respect,whose experience has furnished many valuable suggestions, in this work,whose approbation will be highly valued, and whose influence, inpromoting the object aimed at, is respectfully solicited, this work isdedicated, by their friend and countrywoman,
The author of this work was led to attempt it, by discovering, in herextensive travels, the deplorable sufferings of multitudes of youngwives and mothers, from the combined influence of poor health, poordomestics, and a defective domestic education. The number of youngwomen whose health is crushed, ere the first few years of married lifeare past, would seem incredible to one who has not investigated thissubject, and it would be vain to attempt to depict the sorrow,discouragement, and distress experienced in most families where the wifeand mother is a perpetual invalid.
The writer became early convinced that this evil results mainly from thefact, that young girls, especially in the more wealthy classes, are nottrained for their profession. In early life, they go through a courseof school training which results in great debility of constitution,while, at the same time, their physical and domestic education is almostwholly neglected. Thus they enter on their most arduous and sacredduties so inexperienced and uninformed, and with so little muscular andnervous strength, that probably there is not one chance in ten, thatyoung women of the present day, will pass through the first years ofmarried life without such prostration of health and spirits as makeslife a burden to themselves, and, it is to be feared, such as seriouslyinterrupts the confidence and happiness of married life.
The measure which, more than any other, would tend to remedy this evil,[Pg 6]would be to place domestic economy on an