Chapter III: Part 3

"But I would have a hobby of my own, and do some steady stiff reading, only, as you are going to be a woman, and not a student, I would choose reading that linked me to as many as possible of other people's interests. How dull and shy poor little Miss Smith was yesterday, till I found that she knew Venice as well as I did. After that she quite enjoyed her visit."

"Yes, but I could not have talked about Italy. I never have a chance of going abroad."

"You do not know when you may go, and if you went to-morrow it would be a case of 'No Eyes.' You do not know an interesting piece of architecture when you see it, you would not know what pictures to look for, you would not know the history of the places you went to, and, in short, you would miss nine-tenths of the best points, for want of knowing they were there."

"Yes; I might read up countries, but it is so unlikely that I should ever see them, that it does not seem much use to read up for nothing."

"Well, supposing that you did not go, but that you had read books on Italian Art, and made out a list of the pictures you wanted to see at each great town--Florence, Venice, Rome, Siena--and knew about each painter, his history, his style, and photographs of his works, and copied out under each picture what good critics had said of it, or at least put a reference to the book where it was mentioned (_e.g._ Kingsley's description of Bellini's Doge; Browning on Fra Lippo Lippi's Coronation of the Virgin; Ruskin's best descriptions); and if you looked out all the famous men of each town, and knew their history, and what parts of the town were sacred to them; if you studied the buildings of each town, looked up its architecture, and tried to draw it from photographs and illustrations, and then hunted out all the poetry and novels about each place, and drew out a sketch of its history, marking where the local history of the town dovetailed into larger European interests, and specially where it touched England--I think, after this, you would enjoy meeting any one from Italy almost as much as if you had been there, and you would not feel you had read up for nothing. I should take a fresh country every year, and make believe that you were going to it next summer, and that you were getting ready to be 'Eyes,' and not 'No Eyes,' while there. You would have got the spirit of the country by this, far more than ninety-nine out of a hundred of those who go to it in the flesh. You are leaving school at eighteen, and by the time you are five and twenty, _i.e._ before you are fully grown up, you might have thus visited Italy, France, Germany, Spain, America, India, which would make you a fairly cultivated person."

"But it is so hard to get books; I can read Ruskin while I am with you, and when I am with Uncle Charles I could find some of the others I should want, but I can't get hold of a course of reading at home."

"But if you have such a large peg as Italy on which to hang your reading, you can always find something which bears on it--you can borrow an odd book here and there, or pick up bits in a stray magazine; several of the books you would want are cheap to buy, and, if you keep a list of them, you will be surprised to find from what odd quarters they turn up. People have a way of saying, 'Oh, do recommend me a book,' as if all subjects were equally interesting, or rather uninteresting, and they borrow the first that comes, reading it as a duty, quite regardless of the fact that it does not belong to anything they have read before, or will read after; but if they had made up their mind on a subject, the lending friend would take far more interest, and probably hunt up something that bore on the subject, while the reader would be more likely to get good."

"But if I begin Ruskin here, and then go home, where I may perhaps find an Italian history, and then go for another visit and find something else, it will all be so disjointed."

"Yes, it would be nicer if you could go on with art or architecture; but your reading will not be so desultory as to be useless, if it is all strung on the one thread of Italy, and then you can group it, as you go along, in a commonplace book. I should take a large one, and divide it among the towns I wanted to see, and then subdivide the pages given to, _e.g._ Florence, under the heads of art, history, famous men, architecture, poetry, novels, and, as I read anything on these subjects, I should jot down the substance of it under the right heading, or if it was a poem, just give the title and one or two of the best lines. And you could keep up your French and German at the same time--suppose you read _Corinne_ and the _Improvisator_, they would both help to keep you in an Italian atmosphere."

"Yes, I could keep up my reading, but how about the grammar?"

"I should recommend you to take a very conversational novel and turn a page of it into both French and German every week; this would keep up all the rules of grammar, and, though you might make mistakes, you would gain fluency in expressing yourself, which is much more needed than grammatical accuracy if you go abroad, for a course of lessons will set you right about the grammar at any time, but would not make you talk, if you had allowed yourself to get tongue-tied by not practising translation from English into French; and I should advise you to translate very freely, and use the dictionary as little as possible; if you cannot remember the exact rendering, twist the sentence and paraphrase it, till you can manage it, simply to learn to express your thoughts easily. I should say an hour a week of this would keep up both French and German."

"But you have said nothing of English History and Literature."

"I should be inclined to drop English History for the first year, because you know so much more of that than of Foreign and Ancient History, but if you like it I should take some one prominent reign--Elizabeth or Charles I., or Anne or George III., and get to know all the chief people, read their memoirs, and what they themselves wrote, so as to feel among friends whenever you hear a name of that period mentioned--and read all essays, etc. that you can find upon it. To keep your mind generally open, I should make a chart of contemporary history and another of literature, taking one century a month, and leaving plenty of space for adding things afterwards. In Literature, I should take one of the Men of Letters every month, or one of the Foreign Classics, and at the same time read any of the man's own works that I could. Modern poets and novelists and essayists I should read at odd times, _specially making it a matter of conscience never to open a novel before luncheon_! I should read my poets not only promiscuously, as the fancy took me, but compare their treatment of different subjects; _e.g._, you might make yourself a private New Year's Eve service, of all the poems on it you can find--Coleridge, Tennyson, and Elia's prose poem on the same subject. Or you could make a Shepherd's Calendar for yourself, and copy out under each month what poets have said about it, and its flowers and features generally: or a Poet's Garden; collect all the bits about flowers, and make a 'Poet's Corner' in your garden, admitting no flower that cannot bring some poetry as its credential. It will make country life far more enjoyable if you know your poets as Thomas Holbrook, in 'Cranford,' knew Tennyson."

"I should like all that, Aunt Rachel; but you have not said anything that sounds like stiff reading yet."

"No; and you ought to have something that will tax all your powers, as well as this general cultivation, which will be all pleasant. I should take some really stiff book, on Logic or Political Economy, or Butler's 'Analogy,' and after each morning's work make a careful analysis of the argument, leaving one side of your MS. book blank, that you may put in afterwards any illustrations or criticisms of your own, or others, that may occur to you in the future. I should always keep a stiff book in hand and treat it so, even if all other regularity and plan in my reading fell through--it would be a backbone."

"But I shall have so much writing to do if I am to make a commonplace book on each subject."

"It will make you slower, but much surer. I know a girl who writes a review of every book she reads, giving extracts, and an abstract of the argument and her own opinion of it. She finds it most useful, both as practice in expressing her thoughts and for reference afterwards."

"But it would take so long."

"You would be well repaid, and you would not read any books in your time for study which were not worth taking trouble with. In reading a book, I should put a mark to everything that struck me, and at the end of a chapter should look over the marked bits, and put a second mark to those parts that seemed specially important, after I had mastered the drift of the chapter. It would then be easy, when you had finished the book, to write a review, for you would only look at the doubly marked bits."

"And am I to do no science?"

"I should vary your science with your opportunities, because you have no strong turn for any one in particular. When you go to town in the winter for that long visit you should get some cooking lessons, and before you go you should get the books recommended by the South Kensington Cookery School, and study the bookwork on the subject. When you go away in the summer, you should take up geology, or botany, or whatever suits the place you go to."

"But I shall only have smatterings of things at this rate!"

"Smatterings are very good things in their way, so long as you are not misled into thinking them more than they are! They are the keys which will enable you, in the future, to follow up the subject for which you may have any special opportunities. They also prevent your being quite a dumb note anywhere,--it is something to be able to listen intelligently! Besides, if your mind is open on all sides, you will never find any one dull, for you are almost certain to be able to gain information on some one of the subjects you are interested in."

"I don't see how I can get all these things in, Aunt Rachel, for I shan't have much time."

"I think you might manage two hours a day, and I should divide the week thus: Monday and Friday I should give to Italy or any subject which you meant to take as the staple of your reading; Tuesday take a science, and Wednesday English literature; Thursday take a stiff book and half an hour of French; Saturday take ancient history or mythology and half an hour of German. I should write an essay every week at odd moments, if I were you, for you ought to think things out for yourself as well as filling your mind with other people's thoughts by reading, but you could work out your essay in your head while walking or waiting for any one. I should also advise you to make a list of every book you read after leaving school; you will find it very interesting in after years, especially if you put a short criticism on each."[2]

"But surely I had better do more than one subject in a day? I should get tired of reading one book for two hours."

"You might vary your treatment of the subject. For instance, take notes of the History of Italy for one hour, and look out descriptions of pictures for another. In literature you could read about your author for one hour, and read his works for the next. In your science, give half the time to book-work, and the rest to practical work."

"But would it not be a more thorough change to go to a new subject?"

"So it would, but you may not be able to fit in two hours' reading with your duty to your neighbour! On any day that you could honestly be only a half-timer, you are far less likely to get careless, and to despair of regularity, if you get a bit of your day's subject, than if you have to leave one of your subjects entirely undone."

Even Aunt Rachel's good advice came to an end at last, as in course of time did Urith's visit, and also the Midsummer term, after which she left school with the best possible intentions, and announced them at home with much dignity. But, far from being allowed to carry on her course of study, it became a study with her two small brothers to prevent such morbid fancies from taking effect. They won golden opinions from the servants those holidays, who said that the young gentlemen had never been so little trouble before. They suddenly became as full of "resources within themselves" as Mrs. Elton herself, to the admiration of the whole family, except of the unfortunate Urith, who might have unravelled the mystery, since the cultivation of her domestic virtues by startling and unexpected interruptions of her reading, occupied such of their spare time as was not devoted to the mental exercise of devising new plans for her discomfiture on the morrow.

But, happily for Urith, holidays are terminable, and when the boys left she hoped to do great things. But visitors came to stay in the house, special friends of her own, with strong theories as to the value of co-operation in the matter of brushing their hair at night.

Midnight conversations did not conduce to work before breakfast or to much energy after it. It was, therefore, with very mingled feelings that Urith welcomed Aunt Rachel, her outside conscience, whose yearly visit was usually an unmixed pleasure to her.

Having written much about her intentions at first starting, she was not surprised when her aunt, on the first evening of her visit, settled herself for a talk, and began--

"How is the reading going on? You were very sensible in saying that you meant to begin at once on leaving school, so as not to get out of the habit of work, and as you have now had three months I suppose you have something to show for it?"

"Well, I thought I should have had, but, you see, the boys wouldn't let me!"

"I don't see why you need have drawn the boys' attention to what you were doing; but since they left--"

"The house has been full!"

"Yes, my dear, but as you generally do have visitors, your reading will never flourish at this rate."

"Well, I couldn't neglect them."

"No; but they don't require entertaining before breakfast, do they?"

"No; but I was so sleepy."

"What time did you go to bed?"

"Well, I suppose I ought not to have stayed in Barbara's room, but Alice had so many stories to tell us of her adventures that I did not leave them till after twelve o'clock."

"As Alice is by no means tongue-tied in the daytime, her adventures might have kept, and if you went to bed in proper time, you might get half an hour before breakfast. But what do you do after breakfast?"

"Oh, then the flowers want doing, and mamma always wants some notes to be answered, and then it is so fine that we go for a walk, and don't get back till after luncheon, and then visitors come, and I must be there to talk to them; and when it gets cool, people come in for tennis, and as to reading after that, why, one barely gets time to dress for dinner, and in the evening they like me to play to them, and papa wants the paper read to him, and you know, Aunt Rachel, you always said home duties ought to come first, so I don't see when a girl at home is to read!"

"I quite agree with you about home duties, my dear; but, though many things have changed since my day, home duties must have changed most of all, if they now include chattering till midnight, and taking a two hours' walk in the morning, on days when you are likely to get three hours' tennis in the afternoon, and being obliged to play in the last set, so that you cannot even go and dress a quarter of an hour too soon! It seems to me that you might get these home duties done by eleven o'clock, and then get an hour, or an hour and a half, for steady reading, or, if not so much as that, still visitors do not come directly after luncheon: in fact, I noticed that you got through two volumes of that new novel before any one came. Now, that time would have done equally well for history, and even when the boys are at home, their suspicions would not be much aroused if you went to wash your hands for luncheon a quarter of an hour too soon, and the same in the evening before dinner."

"Yes, Aunt Rachel, it all seems very easy when I talk to you, and I feel now as if I should carry out all you say, but I know a hundred little things will come to make it very hard. I wish it were easier to carry out one's good intentions."

"I do not wish it for you, my dear; you will be worth ten times more if you have to exert strength of character, than if everything is done for you; we ought to feel a little insulted if Fortune lets us live on too easy terms, though I cannot say, after all, that you have very hard ones. There now! I have given you quite enough advice to start several girls in life. I will only add this: do not get flurried over your work, or insist on doing it when time and strength will not permit; and, on the other hand, do not be self-indulgent!"

"Like as a star
That maketh not haste,
That taketh not rest,
Be each one pursuing
His God-given hest."

[Footnote 2: See "Record of a Year's Reading." 6_d_. Mowbray.]

"Get up, M. le Comte!"

You have all been considering what qualities are most necessary in family life and what qualities are most to be deprecated--you have, in short, been considering Dr. Johnson's question as to what makes "a clubbable person." I find, on comparing your suggestions, that there are thirty-eight things to avoid in home life (which suggests complexity); however, each of you was to confine her attention to three virtues and three failings, so in giving you my own likes and dislikes, I will not dwell on more than three.

I will not take manifest faults like irritability or selfishness--we all strive against those, but I would suggest turns of mind that are often not realized as faults:--

I.--_The Benevolent Despot_ who takes infinite trouble for your help or pleasure, but insists on your enjoying yourself in _her_ way. (The young very often do this to the old or to the invalid, quite forgetting that one's own way loses none of its charm, even in age or illness!)

II.--Then there is the _Peter Grievous_ who cannot stand a word of reproof; she is aggrieved or huffy or sulky in a minute--she thinks that she has a delicate sense of justice, and that she does well to be angry; she feels as if her mother took a curious and selfish enjoyment in finding fault with her,--whereas the poor mother has to take her courage in both hands before saying anything calculated to bring on those black looks.

III.--And then there is _The Snail_, always slow, generally late, and frequently a martyr--she has to be spoken to so often that her case usually develops into the Peter Grievous disease as well. For if a mother speaks, let us say, six times--in the daughter's mind it ceases to be reproof, and becomes Nagging. It never occurs to the daughter that she sinned six times (or even shall we say eight or ten?); she feels that she is being nagged at, and may therefore cease to attend, and may enjoy a grievance into the bargain!

Now, I have slow friends who really suffer from a sense of their failing, and who realize acutely what they make others suffer; they were not trained at first to pull themselves together and to collect beforehand any materials they were likely to want (as you can train yourselves by settling in properly to do your preparation)--and they did not teach themselves to start five minutes sooner instead of leaving things to the last moment. (They think that the consequent family thundercloud is their sad fate from their being of a slow constitution.) But if you have only one horse and your neighbour two, and you are to dine at the same house, it only means that you must order yours earlier. Do not start together and then bewail your sad fate; nothing condemns you to be late except your own bad management.

Especially be careful to be up early when you are going to early service with your mother; it fidgets her to wait--she recalls all your many previous sins of the same kind--and just when you both want to feel _at one_, you start off together (rather, I should say, you overtake her), both feeling very much _at two_. And yet you made an effort to go! and you feel she ought to be pleased with you--do not spoil it by that fly in the ointment of being late.

* * * * *

It seems to me that the Benevolent Despot, the Peter Grievous, and the Martyred Snail, are people to avoid in choosing your family!

Now, the people to choose for your family party are, first, _the Reliable Person_. I know one person who is a perfect tower of strength, she is full of common sense: if you give her a commission she is sure to get the right thing and to do it reasonably; she knows exactly what she paid, and she tells you! If she undertakes to do a thing it is certain to be done in good time; she does not wait till the very day the thing is wanted and then find that it cannot be got.

Now, _you_ often let yourselves do a stupid thing, or a forgetful thing, and then say, "Oh, I'm so sorry!" and feel as if you had wiped it out. Not at all! You have lost one chance of growing into a reliable woman. In all your life you will only have a certain limited number of chances, and should use every one you have--to be reliable is worth all the genius in the world for comfort to others, and _you can each win this crown_ if you care to do so.

One other person I would choose if I were fated to have sisters, would be the one who purrs when she is pleased. It takes all the colour and air out of life when people gaze impassively at beautiful things, or hear lovely things and never seem to have taken them in; or meet kindness and look as if it was not there. You do not need to gush, but _do_ purr!

And thirdly I want a magnanimous nature;--one that takes slights and neglects in a large-minded way, and does not believe people meant them and, if they _did_, does not fret: one who is serene when little things go wrong, and does not fuss or worry: one who accepts generously as well as gives generously, and who is keenly alive to people's good points and good intentions. Little petty motives and small spites and jealousy die away in the light of a nature like that. It keeps the family atmosphere sweet and wholesome.

* * * * *

Now, my lessons are generally about the things that can be carried out at home, or else about the beliefs that underlie them. You know that my ambition for you is that you should go out into the world and lead the ordinary small social life, but that you should live it in a great way and bring great beliefs to bear on it.

This is a special lesson--the last of all to some of you--the last in this year to all of you.

How long have you been at school, each of you? How many times have we come together here, and thought over together, point after point, the things that really matter to us?

Week after week we are reminded by these talks to pull ourselves together, first in one way, then in another, and I do believe we have all tried.

Have the suggestions _I_ made and the Resolutions _we_ made, soaked into our lives and altered the stuff of which we are made? That is the Responsibility for _me_ who speak and for _you_ who hear: "To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin."

A Bible lesson written for you and dwelling on your special life and dangers is a more pointed reminder to you than a general sermon, and when you leave you will not get these reminders: one is hardly ever spoken to religiously after being grown up. It is no one's business afterwards (as it is mine now) to speak to you.

Therefore I want you always to keep some religious book on hand that is likely to _speak_ to _you_. For instance, Bishop Wilkinson's books speak, so do Dean Paget's and Law's "Serious Call," and "Christian Perfection." Read a little of such a book every day, and a longer bit on Sunday. If you only say your prayers and go to church, it is apt to become an outside thing; you want stirring up!

When you go out into the world you may drift into the ways of each household you are with for the time being; whereas I want you to have your own definite religious life, an inner life of rules and duties: dress like other people, but keep a hair shirt underneath, as the Saints did.

And when I talk about this and that piece of advice (advice which is often worldly wisdom; for goodness and worldly wisdom are closely allied),--always remember that I pre-suppose the life of prayer and rule about which I so often speak--only _there_ can you gain strength to follow such advice.

But now (pre-supposing the inner religious life--the effort after the Practice of the Presence of God)--what shall I pick out as practical advice for a closing lesson to those who are going into the world?

I.--Always _vote on the right side_ in conversation.

Very often the lower side, or the _un_religious side in talk (or in doings, such as not going to Church) is the easier side to take. It seems obtrusive to show what you feel to be right; and very often the one who takes the religious side is narrow-minded and tiresome compared to the others. Goodness is very often tiresome, and non-religion broad-minded and amusing. (Gallio is often a most attractive person!) It takes courage then to side with the tiresome one, instead of saying something rather clever. In youth one has a great horror of belonging to the tiresome side. Cleverness counts for so much, and it is hard in early life to put goodness first! One does not realize the beauty of the strength and principle shown by the tiresome people, and it takes real principle to show one's colours in ordinary talk.

I once heard of an earnest religious girl who was asked to a pleasant country house, and who thought she might lawfully take a holiday, as it were, and be like other people while away from home; so she laughed and talked with the rest and kept her real life to herself. On the last night, a girl she had taken a fancy to came into her room, and, after a little time, said, "It has been so nice meeting you, but I rather wish your sister had come too." "But I have no sister." "Why, I have heard so much of her, and of how good she is, and though you wouldn't think it, I have been bothered about things lately, and when I heard your name, I thought it was she who was coming here, and I planned to have a talk with her:--you're awfully nice, but of course one wouldn't talk about those things to you any more than to any of the rest of us."

I leave you to fancy the resolutions that girl made, to show her colours for the future!

And then it does not seem to matter--no _harm_ is being said or done, Gallio is generally an excellent person, and really "So-and-so" was unnecessarily tiresome in raising the point; and then, again, one's indolence bids one be quiet and vote neither way.

But every vote on the right side counts; it alters the balance of the general feeling, and probably helps some one looking on,--some one who never let out that they needed or cared for any help. "Right!" has a big battle to fight, and you and I are soldiers, and must stand to our guns.

Have the courage to show that you like goodness. It makes a difference, for no one ever tells an unkind story to a large-hearted woman, or a nasty story to a nice-minded woman.

If they tell either to you, it means an intuitive perception that you enjoy it,--you bring out that side of them; if there is no response in you, that side of them goes to sleep while they are with you. You create your world in your own image, and are responsible for what is said to you, as well as for what you say.

II.--My second advice is: _Show your mother that you love her._ "In one's whole life one can never have more than a single mother. You may think this obvious.... You are a green gosling! I was at the same age as wise as you, and yet never discovered this till it was too late."[3]

Your mother will plan for you to go out and enjoy yourselves, and she probably will not say that she is left alone by this or that arrangement; but _you_ must think for her and protest against it, and see that she gets amusement, and is talked to.

I know girls who will leave their mother alone night after night, or sit at home and never utter a word. _They_ do not think of it, and _she_ feels left out. Even if she makes you go out, she will like your noticing and thinking for her. I believe each daughter fails to realize in her own case how much her mother values signs of the love which both know to be there.

You may say, "My mother does not like a fuss!"--Very likely. But there are ways and ways.--I do not believe any older person is ever anything but pleased when their little pleasures are seen to be a matter of real consideration to a younger one. I have watched so many mothers now that I see it, but I myself used to let my affection be taken for granted. I see now how much more pleasure I might have given, and I would give anything if _you_ would do what they say is impossible--_i.e._ profit by some one else's experience, and try to show your affection for your mother. She is the only person to whom it is safe to fully express your affection. If you feel strongly for any one else, expressing it is apt to lead you to be silly, or sentimental, or wanting in self-control, but little loving ways with your mother are quite different--they are always comforting to her and good for you. Every one of an older generation is apt to feel that the younger one does not want them; therefore express your affection doubly to an elder compared to what is necessary or right, or wise to an equal, _because by nature the elder does not quite believe in it!_

I dare say you are nevertheless thinking as I used to do. "One's mother is quite different--_she_ knows I love her best." In a way that is true, but all I have said is true too!

III.--My third advice is: _Put some salt into every day_--the salt of effort and self-denial. Go on with a book though it bores you. Go out for a walk though you feel lazy. Finish some drawing or needlework, which you would rather leave to begin something else. Make yourself do something which you do not like, and which is useful.

And I say to all of you, not only to the leaving ones: Do not lounge through the day just because it is holidays. You are not a little child who has to be made to do things: you are a sensible, reasonable being, who wants to grow. You do not leave off eating for a month, you do not leave off growing for a month; then do not leave off growing in other ways. Do not be _worthless_ at any time.

Some of you seem to think you will not have to give account of holidays to God--_I_ think you will be more called to account for them, for then you have a chance of showing your real stuff.

And when you are grown up, and quite free, feel that you are still more responsible.

Enjoy yourself to the top of your bent, but see that each day you gain new power to do what you ought, and what you make up your mind to do; and remember that this power is only gained in the using--and dies out if we do not use it. I shall be horribly disappointed if you do not gain this power, and if you do not use it well, "to the Glory of God and the Relief of Man's Estate."

Be ambitious--be all you were meant to be; make the world different; be generous--freely you have received, freely give.

Some one said to me the other day, "Girls are younger nowadays, and they go on being young till they are well through middle life. At sixteen we had to look after other people, but they shirk responsibility, till women of thirty are content to be like birds of the air, just amusing themselves, and feeling no call to be of any serious use."

I said, "Well, _I_ do not like to see even a girl of eighteen with no _raison d'être_, 'living like a prize animal!'"

Why were you born? God thought about you, and took trouble about you, and has something you can do for Him. To exist beautifully is not enough! Have you definite duties, which you stick to even though they bore you, _e.g._, house duties, or reading aloud, or lessons with the younger ones? If not, find some!

Marcus Aurelius counted each day lost in which he could not at night look back on something he had done for others.

Jeremy Taylor, in the "Golden Grove," says:--"Suppose every day to be a day of business: for your whole life is a race and a battle; a merchandise, a journey. Every day propounds to yourself a rosary or chaplet of works, to present to God at night."

I have given you three pieces of advice--

I.--Vote on the right side in conversation.
II.--Show that you love your mother.
III.--Put salt into every day.

I would end with one more. I take it from Saint Simon, that clever on-looker at the Court of Louis XIV. whose memoirs are famous. His morning greeting to himself was--

_"Get up, M. le Comte! you have great things to do to-day."_

You will all of you go out to lives that you _can_ make empty and self-indulgent and narrow if you like; you _can_ shirk duties and eat capriciously or intemperately, and lie in bed too long; you _can_ idle about all day amusing yourself, and fill your mind with dress and gossip and spite;--perhaps you would feel there was "no harm" in such a life!

_No harm!_ I would rather hear you were dead than that you lived a life like that!

On the other hand, every day of your life you _can_ make the wings of your soul grow by an honest bit of self-denial, by an honest bit of work for others, by an honest bit of mental work.

Every day you can be _more worth having_; there is not one of you here who has not the power to make herself--and to _pray_ herself--into a noble, dutiful woman.

_"Get up, M. le Comte! you have great things to do to-day."_

[Footnote 3: Gray's Letters to W. Mann.]

A Friday Lesson.

Our course of lessons for this term brings us to-day to Jephthah's story; to decide on the amount of blame due to the father is not a matter which so nearly concerns us as to learn the lesson of true womanhood taught us by the daughter. Hers was no blind obedience; her reason for sacrificing herself gives us the true position of a woman as a helpmeet, and as a helpmeet in the performance of public duty. "If thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord"--her father must do his duty at all costs, and she will help him to do it, even at the cost of her own life. The place of every woman is to make duty possible and imperative for those about her--for brother, sister, husband, friend. How many women keep their menkind back from public duty by their fretfulness about the inconveniences entailed on themselves? A clergyman or doctor has to face fatigue or infection,--a citizen wishes to vote according to his conscience and against his interest: how often a woman--wife, sister, or mother--puts expediency before him, persuades him that "'second best' will do," instead of aiming at "one equal temper of heroic hearts."

Besides the love of her country and the sense of public duty, which shine out in Jephthah's daughter, notice the plain lesson of simple obedience, "That she subdued her to her Father's will."

The ideal of obedience is less thought of now than in the "Ages of Faith,"--perhaps, in one way, this is only a right development; but, though obedience is a "young" stage of moral growth, it is a necessary one,--mankind went through it, and each man or woman worth the name must go through it even as our Lord Himself did. I recognize the strength, the North-country virtue of "grit" in such independence and sturdiness as that of the Yorkes in "Shirley," but the willing and reasonable obedience of a strong nature seems to me still higher--it is a nobler attitude of mind to feel, "I don't care whether I get my own way in this or that, or am my own master; I want to be in touch with the larger, higher life around me," that larger life of moral growth into which only a humble, teachable nature can enter. The larger, stronger nature--the big dog--yields gladly to its master; the small terrier nature loves to find an opportunity to yap and snarl. There is nothing fine about the unreasoning instinct to resent an order--it is rather the sign of a small nature. To take the commonest instances, when you are told to go to bed, or to mend your dress, or to put on a wrap, or to tidy your room, are you in any way a finer nature if you dawdle and argue and resent the order? Nothing is so small as self-sufficiency and self-centredness, whereas humility and obedience are of the Nature of our Lord Himself, and every humble and obedient soul is in communion with His Greatness. Dante's hierarchy of heaven, "in order serviceable," in ordered ranks, culminating in God Himself, gives us a feeling of harmonious greatness which is lacking in the scattered units of his "Inferno." It was only ignoble greatness which preferred to reign in Hell rather than serve in Heaven.

It may be that, in the maturer stages of life, obedience ceases to be a primary virtue. I am not at all clear when that mature stage begins,--but all would admit, in theory, that a noble character must have obedience as a foundation. I think it would help you if you could step outside your own momentary irritation at being ordered to do this or that, and see how unlovely it is to argue and stand on your rights and contest points. The essence of good breeding is to give way to others; quite apart from the consideration of the "Fifth Commandment," a thorough-bred person would shudder at the rude tone of voice, the snappishness, the contentiousness, the contradiction which many girls--otherwise "nice" girls--allow themselves to show in speaking to their mothers. How many of you feel quite guiltless on this score? I am afraid you would often have to blush if a stranger, to whom you looked up, could hear the way you answer back at home.

You half feel as though it were "fine" not to be ordered about;--but the "best" people in the Christian sense of the word, and the "best" people in the worldly sense, inherit the feelings of the ages of chivalry, that, the nobler a man was, the more deference and service he showed to others: "_Ich dien_" is the motto of chivalry and worldly greatness.--"I am among you as he that serveth" was the saying of Him Who, "though He were a Son," "learnt obedience." For this next week, when you are tempted to answer back--to be independent--to resent being ordered--remember how much more beautiful, how much more noble, is a humble submissive temper, than the miserably small ambition of being your own master. Do not be so small-minded as to contest and resent authority. You sometimes hear a servant say, "That's not my place," or "I won't be put upon." You never hear a true lady speak in that temper,--and yet, is there any difference in spirit between this tone which you would condemn, and your own way of answering back? You cannot get out of bad habits all at once, but get your ideal right, and you will grow to it. If you are not living in your own family, and feel inclined to resent orders, remember the days of chivalry, when all pages (often princes by birth) spent their youth serving in other people's houses, and learning the motto of every true knight, "I serve."

And whether with strangers or at home, remember Him Who was subject unto His parents, Him of Whom Jephthah's daughter was but a faint type.

A Home Art; or, Mothers and Daughters.

Know your own work, and do it.

This is a simple sounding rule, but we all find practical difficulties in following it. You have most of you lately left school, and I think the difficulty of the first part of this saying must have struck some of you. At school you knew your own work,--you had a certain time-table, you walked with the crutches of routine; and when you left school and found your day mostly at your own disposal, you learnt that a free life is far more difficult, and therefore far nobler, than a life under direction.

It was pleasant at first to be able to carry out your own fancies, but you awoke after a while to the fact that you were not spending holidays but living your real life; and then the thought must have come, if you had any stuff in you, "I must anyhow live my life; am I living it nobly?"

How can you live a noble life? Bacon gives us, perhaps, the best answer when he says that "the end of all learning should be the Glory of God and the Relief of Man's Estate." Shall this be the result of your school learning? Others can speak to you from experience, as I cannot, of the glory and happiness of a life spent in the Relief of Man's Estate: I would speak to you of a preliminary stage of work for that relief, of some of the difficulties which beset girls on first leaving school, and owing to which so much noble aspiration and unselfish enthusiasm run to waste.

I believe one of the main difficulties is _friction at home_; a difficulty on which I the rather dwell because it is harder, for those who know you personally, to speak of it without irritating you, or else criticizing your home. How is this home difficulty met? Some meet it by leaving home,--which reminds me of the minister who said in his sermon, "This is a serious difficulty in our belief, my brethren; let us look it boldly in the face,--and pass it by." Some lay themselves open to _Punch's_ attack, when he depicts a girl saying, "Mamma has become quite blind now, and papa is paralytic, and it makes the house so dull that I'm going to be a hospital nurse."

Many who are too clear-sighted to neglect home duties, yet leave this difficulty unfaced, in that they look for all the pleasure of their life outside home, and within that home allow themselves to live in an atmosphere of friction and peevishness. The girl who does that has left the riddle of home life unsolved: she was meant to wrestle with that difficulty till she wrung from it the blessing, the peace which comes only from self-conquest and acceptance of all the circumstances of her life.

Have any of you the lurking thought, "I was born by no choice of my own: those who brought me into the world owe duty to me, not I to them?" I have known some say this, and I have known many act as if they thought it, and I have known some who felt as if God had better work for them to do outside home, and have either gone off to do it, or have chafed against life because they could not go. It does seem to me that the present very general eclipse of the old Roman virtue of filial piety lies at the root of much of the unsound work, and of the undone work, of the present day.

Know your own work, and do it. What is your work on leaving school? Is it not to learn to fit into your home? At school, when you got your remove, your duty was to get into the work of the new form, and to do it. You have now been moved to higher and far more difficult work than any sixth form, you are in the school of home. Are you learning its lessons, or are you fretting for a remove? It may be you find life so easy and pleasant at home that you feel any talk of its difficulties does not apply to you; it is all play so far. But I know so many who feel this friction on leaving school, that I am sure it must be the case with some of you.

If any here fail to feel the debt they owe at home--the debt which God enforced as next to the debt owed to Himself--let me remind them that the whole instinct of mankind has responded to the appeal of parents; filial piety has always been reverenced and held beautiful, and the hereditary sense of mankind must be taken into account in deciding what is, or is not, a virtue. But supposing I granted, for the sake of argument, that the original debt was on your parents' side and not on yours, what then? You remain as bound as ever to show them submission and devotion; all, in short, that the old-fashioned believers in the Fifth Commandment thought to be due from a daughter. If you are striving after a noble life you must give all this,--if you owe allegiance to either the Christian ideal of love or to the Pagan one of strength. "If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God Whom he hath not seen?" and, equally, if he love not his brother close at hand, how can he love brethren afar off? It is a poor sort of love which lavishes itself on self-chosen and, therefore, less irritating objects of charity, and is powerless to influence the home atmosphere. It is a poor sort of strength which shrinks from the hardest fight, from the conquest of self at home.

Is not every right and wise piece of good work for others an attempt to help them to train themselves to live a higher life? And can we dare to put our hand to this plough while neglecting our own training?

I was asked to speak to you about WORK, and you may think I am forgetting this in dwelling on home life. Not at all; I am looking on home life not as an end in itself, but as God's great training-school for His best workers; as the special place for the development of those qualities which are essential to all true and lasting work for "the Relief of Man's Estate."

I do not think I underrate the difficulties girls find; quite apart from her own faults and weaknesses, a girl who leaves school and goes home has probably three difficulties to contend with.

First, the change from restraint to liberty, which is a difficult phase in every life. Will you make it a change from "the rich bounties of constraint" to self-restraint, which is better still; or will you let it be a change to the weak lawlessness of a drifting life? If you would respect yourselves, and be worthy to take part in the great battle between good and evil, make and keep some rules for yourselves. Have a rule about getting up in the morning and (almost equally important) about going to bed at night; a rule against novels in the morning; a rule to read something sensible every day. Make what rule you please, only keep it, or you will never be more than a cumberer of the ground. Reading is the best thing to save your life from being eaten away by trifles. The best advisers say to a man taking a country living, "Read, read, read;" I say to you, read doggedly; the snare of a free life is desultory reading. Make any plan of stiff reading you like, and stick to it for one year, writing out notes of what you read, and you will be fitter for real work if it comes, as come it will.

I dare say you find reading is cold work,--very few women really enjoy knowledge for its own sake,--you are tempted to throw it up, and to drift in an easy good-tempered way, which pleases the others much more than your shutting yourself up to read. And the others are quite right in expecting you, now school is over, to be a woman, "with a heart at leisure from itself" and from self-improvement. One of the hardest home lessons for some girls to learn is the power of sitting idle and chatting. They feel it waste of time; they long to be doing something tangible; and yet a home atmosphere is mainly the result of the mother having acquired the art of leisure. You will be very unrestful house-mothers when your turn comes, and very unsatisfactory daughters and sisters in the mean time, if you are always at high pressure, and giving your family to understand that you must not be spoken to!