"If there is perfect unreserve and mutual confidence, let it show itself in free communications coming unsolicited. It may fairly be presumed, that, if there is anything our intimate friends wish us to know, they will tell us of it,--and that when we are on close and confidential terms with persons, and there are topics on which they do not speak to us, it is because for some reason they prefer to keep silence concerning them; and the delicacy that respects a friend's silence is one of the charms of life.
"As with the asking of questions, so with the offering of advice, there should be among friends a wise reticence.
"Some families are always calling each other to account at every step of the day. 'What did you put on that dress for? Why didn't you wear that?'--'What did you do this for? Why didn't you do that?'--'Now _I_ should advise you to do thus and so.'--And these comments and criticisms and advices are accompanied with an energy of feeling that makes it rather difficult to disregard them.
"Now it is no matter how dear and how good our friends may be, if they abridge our liberty and fetter the free exercise of our life, it is inevitable that we shall come to enjoying ourselves much better where they are not than where they are; and one of the reasons why brothers and sisters or children so often diverge from the family-circle in the choice of confidants is, that extraneous friends are bound by certain laws of delicacy not to push inquiries, criticisms, or advice too far.
"Parents would do well to remember in time when their children have grown up into independent human beings, and use with a wise moderation those advisory and admonitory powers with which they guided their earlier days. Let us give everybody a right to live his own life, as far as possible, and avoid imposing our own personalities on another.
"If I were to picture a perfect family, it should be a union of people of individual and marked character, who through love have come to a perfect appreciation of each other, and who so wisely understand themselves and one another that each may move freely along his or her own track without jar or jostle,--a family where affection is always sympathetic and receptive, but never inquisitive,--where all personal delicacies are respected,--and where there is a sense of privacy and seclusion in following one's own course, unchallenged by the watchfulness of others, yet withal a sense of society and support in a knowledge of the kind dispositions and interpretations of all around.