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Be Courteous - or, Religion, the True Refiner by Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
page 51 of 85 (60%)
promenade the damp walks of the city; the flimsy ball-dress, the
prolonged dance, and joined with these, the sudden exposure to a wintry
air, were shades upon the bright picture of pleasures past,--dark
shades indeed, but awfully true.

"Perhaps Martha and Emma may be spared to me," said the mother to her
fashionable friends; "but how can I think of the conditions!" and her
friends talked over the matter among themselves, and concluded that,
after all, a person's life was of but little value, if they must live
secluded from the world; and they gave Mrs. Lindsay a remote hint, that
it was best to let her daughters live _while_ they lived.

Mrs. Lindsay, however, had more than once stood upon the threshold of
another life, having followed a husband and two daughters to the silent
tomb: and in her secret heart she suspected the small value of what she
had purchased at so great a cost. It seemed hard indeed to deprive her
beautiful children of a fashionable education, and the struggle was
very severe; but the mother triumphed over worldly vanity, and Monsieur
de la Beaumont was told that his services in the family as
dancing-master were no longer desired.

"One strange ting!" said monsieur; and the world at large thought the
same.

Mrs. Lindsay considered herself as having made a great sacrifice to
affection, and sometimes feared that she might live to see the day when
she should wish her little novices out of sight, somewhere. One thing
she determined on, however; and that was to take as much of the world
as she could get herself, and thus solace herself for what she was to
lose in her daughters. It cannot be supposed, that with this resolution
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