Boston, will correct this mania. Instruction the children want to enable
them to profit by the great natural advantages of their position; but
methods copied from the education of some English Lady Augusta, are as
ill suited to the daughter of an Illinois farmer, as satin shoes to
climb the Indian mounds. An elegance she would diffuse around her, if
her mind were opened to appreciate elegance; it might be of a kind new,
original, enchanting, as different from that of the city belle as that
of the prairie torch-flower from the shopworn article that touches the
cheek of that lady within her bonnet.

To a girl really skilled to make home beautiful and comfortable, with
bodily strength to enjoy plenty of exercise, the woods, the streams, a
few studies, music, and the sincere and familiar intercourse, far more
easily to be met here than elsewhere, would afford happiness enough. Her
eyes would not grow dim, nor her cheeks sunken, in the absence of
parties, morning visits, and milliner's shops.

As to music, I wish I could see in such places the guitar rather than
the piano, and good vocal more than instrumental music.

The piano many carry with them, because it is the fashionable instrument
in the eastern cities. Even there, it is so merely from the habit of
imitating Europe, for not one in a thousand is willing to give the labor
requisite to ensure any valuable use of the instrument.

But, out here, where the ladies have so much less leisure, it is still
less desirable. Add to this, they never know how to tune their own
instruments, and as persons seldom visit them who can do so, these
pianos are constantly out of tune, and would spoil the ear of one who
began by having any.