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BOOKS BY ELIZA CHESTER. 
 (HARRIET E. PAINE.) 
 
 Chats with Girls on Self-Culture 
 
 AND 
 
 The Unmarried Woman. 
 
 Each izmo. $1.25. 
 
THE PORTIA SERIES 
 
 CHATS WITH GIRLS ^^"^ 
 
 ON 
 
 SELF-CULTURE 
 
 BY 
 
 ELIZA CHESTER 
 
 AUTHOR OF "GIRLS AND WOMEN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD, AND COMPANY 
 1897 
 
-m^ 
 
 Copyright, t89l. 
 By Dodd, Mead, and Company. 
 
 AU rights reurved 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGR 
 
 I. What is Self-Culture? i 
 
 II. A Word about the Body i8 
 
 III. How shall we learn to Observe . . 23 
 
 IV. How shall we learn to Remember? . 38 
 V. How shall we learn to Think ? . . . 54 
 
 VI. The Study of Languages 64 
 
 VII. The Cultivation of the Love of 
 
 Beauty 75 
 
 VIII. How SHALL WE READ? 95 
 
 IX. What shall we Read? io6 
 
 X. Travel "4 
 
 XI. The Cultivation of a Sense of Humour 125 
 
 XII. Dull Girls 129 
 
 XIII. Clever Girls ••••143 
 
 XIV. Moral Culture i53 
 
 XV. The Training of the Will 161 
 
 XVI. Justice and Truth . 171 
 
 XVII. A Spirit of Love 182 
 
 XVIII. The Choice of Companions i97 
 
 XIX. The Meaning of our Culture to 
 
 Others 206 
 
CHATS WITH GIRLS ON 
 SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 I. 
 
 WHAT IS SELF-CULTURE? 
 
 ONE summer morning, long ago, I sat in a pleasant 
 schoolroom and listened while a group of fine 
 young girls in fresh, white dresses read their gradu- 
 ating compositions. One of them, whose eyes were 
 clear and whose voice was earnest, had chosen as her 
 subject the words of Jean Paul, — ** I have made of my- 
 self all that could be made of the stuff." I have for- 
 gotten her composition ; but I think it must have been 
 forcible, since after all these years I remember her dig- 
 nity of bearing, and the impression of her motto has 
 never been lost. It seems to me a worthy introduction 
 to the subject of Self-Culture. 
 
 Self-Culture is the education which we give ourselves, 
 or in other words, the culture of ourselves by ourselves. 
 We have all kinds of material to work upon, and some 
 of us have great help from others in our work, but we all 
 have to do something. Even a princess, surrounded by 
 
2 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 teachers from the moment she is born, cannot be cul- 
 tivated without doing a part of the work. 
 
 The help of others ought to be a blessing to us, and 
 it is so in the case of real help ; but so much that is 
 called help is not real, that those who are forced to rely 
 on themselves often make the most complete men and 
 women. Nevertheless the pronoun I is apt to have an 
 unlovely character. Whoever is always saying, *' I did 
 it," " I made this of myself," etc., is not very attractive. 
 Those who have no culture but self-culture are so in 
 danger of being one-sided in their development, that it 
 is necessary to sound a note of warning to them at the 
 very beginning of this little book. It is certainly our 
 duty to make all we can of the stuff. We can often do 
 this modestly by following the advice of our parents and 
 teachers ; but when we are called upon to take counsel 
 of ourselves alone, we have to concentrate our attention 
 so much on ourselves that the result may be disastrous. 
 
 ** Evelina's conversation is rather exhausting," said a 
 lively young teacher. " On the train she explains the 
 action of the engine, beginning with the fire under the 
 boiler, and never stopping till the steam has passed off 
 into space. Coming home from a concert she lets no 
 one rest till she has pointed out all the visible constella- 
 tions. At Plymouth the other day she insisted on 
 relating the entire history of the Pilgrim Fathers, — that 
 is, so far as she knows it ; and she always uses French 
 
WHAT IS SELF-CULTURE? 3 
 
 when an English word would express her idea better. 
 Of course it is beautiful that she is so devoted to her 
 studies ! " 
 
 Now it happened that Evelina had had few home 
 advantages. She had never known the principle of the 
 steam-engine till she learned it in a book, and she was 
 delighted to find she understood it. Her father and 
 mother had never told her the story of the Pilgrim 
 Fathers, and she naturally supposed it would be new to 
 other people. As for French, she thought that only 
 practice would make perfect, without realizing that 
 such practice as hers would be likely to make her 
 speech all the more imperfect. She was a well-disposed 
 girl with a good mind. She would sometime be edu- 
 cated, so far as information goes, and perhaps after a 
 time she would see that education is something more 
 than information. 
 
 It is well to have knowledge at our command, but not 
 always well to inflict it upon others, especially if it is of 
 a kind they could easily acquire for themselves if they 
 had the wish. I knew a teacher so determined to avoid 
 pedantry that she made it a rule never to correct any 
 mistake made by others outside the schoolroom. 
 Indeed, she often indulged in little colloquial errors 
 herself, saying she would rather be ungrammatical than 
 disagreeable. I should not be surprised if she went too 
 far. 
 
4 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 For why should we not take pleasure in telling others 
 the things we know? Is it not amiable to do so? It 
 is amiable to tell them what they wish to know; it is 
 even occasionally a duty to tell them what they do not 
 wish to know; but it is never either amiable or a duty 
 to tell anything simply to show that we know it. The 
 self-educated are most in danger of doing this. The 
 girls who learn from cultured mothers and fathers by 
 sharing the atmosphere of culture are not so likely to 
 "show off" their acquisitions as those to whom such 
 acquisitions are less a matter of course. 
 
 Culture of ourselves is an even more important part 
 of self-culture than culture by ourselves. We must be 
 glad of all the advantages of home and school, of friends 
 and society and travel, which come to us without our 
 own effort, and then we must make the most of all 
 these. 
 
 But why do we wish to cultivate ourselves? Perhaps 
 many motives are at work in us. It may be that some 
 girl who takes up this book is smarting with a sense of 
 injustice. She feels that she is looked down upon by 
 those who are not her superiors. She has heard that 
 knowledge is power. She has no one to help her, but 
 she wants to learn how to help herself that she may win 
 her way to a higher position in life. Well, the motive is 
 not altogether bad, and yet it is not a noble one. I hope 
 that every such girl will win her way, but I hope that her 
 
WHAT IS SELF-CULTURE? 5 
 
 object in trying to cultivate herself will not be what is 
 generally called success. 
 
 A great deal of self-culture comes from a desire to 
 make an impression on others. This is especially sc 
 with women because in them approbativeness is large. 
 But what an unworthy motive ! 
 
 Some think of culture as a means of increasing the 
 sources of happiness. This is right. We are happier 
 when we have the full use of our powers. There is 
 a never-failing glory and exhilaration in thinking new 
 thoughts and discovering new truth which makes us 
 happy in poverty, obscurity, neglect, and pain. Age 
 does not dull the keenness of this pleasure. Young peo- 
 ple are sometimes impatient because there is so much to 
 learn, and the girls for whom I write may not realize that 
 what I say is anything more than mere words ; but it is 
 true that those who love the things of the intellect unsel- 
 fishly find surprises of splendour waiting for them all 
 along their pathway to the very end. 
 
 Sometimes the motive for self-culture is the hope of 
 being of use to others. This is so lofty that I wish it 
 were common ; but it is very rare. 
 
 I believe the true reason why we should wish to be all 
 we may be is because the power to become so is put into 
 our own hands. This is the Httle garden-plot which we 
 have had given us to beautify. If we neglect it, there will 
 always be one blot on the universe. 
 
6 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 It would still be our privilege as well as our duty to 
 "make the most of the stuff" if we were cast away on a 
 solitary island and knew we were never more to see a 
 human being. If we had any nobleness in us, we should 
 still wish to keep our bodies clean and sweet ; we should 
 still wish to think and feel truly though we could no 
 longer tell the truth ; and to hold ourselves in the attitude 
 of love though there was no one of our race to whom we 
 could express our love. We could still love God and the 
 humble creatures around us ; but more than that, our 
 hearts could go out to those we should never see. If it 
 were not so, if we failed here, we should also fail when 
 living in the world. 
 
 Self-culture is never wholly for ourselves. Intellectual 
 and physical culture may in a selfish person end with the 
 individual, though even this is seldom true ; but moral 
 culture cannot possibly end with self. 
 
 What is the end of self-culture ? 
 
 Perhaps we may turn to our catechism for the answer, — 
 *' What is the chief end of man ? To glorify God, and 
 serve and enjoy Him forever." But this is a general 
 though a sublime answer, and we must have definite aims 
 if we wish to bring our daily life into harmony with our 
 highest conceptions. 
 
 What kind of women do we wish to be? 
 
 A great deal depends on the answer to this question. 
 I suppose that the girls who are most likely to read a 
 
WHAT IS SELF-CULTURE? 7 
 
 book on self-culture are those who have an intellectual 
 bent. Their first thought — at least in reading such a 
 book — is how they shall make the most of their minds. 
 And yet how few of them, if they stop to think, would 
 be satisfied to be simply intellectual women ! 
 
 I remember a girl who had an insatiable thirst for 
 knowledge and a mind of wonderful power. She had 
 germs of a noble character. She was upright and just. 
 Terrible trouble came to her when she was very young. 
 She had a desperate struggle with poverty, and the whole 
 care of a chronic invalid fell on her delicate shoulders. 
 She did her duty faithfully ; she fought her way through 
 frightful obstacles ; she gained a thorough education, and 
 became at last a learned woman. On the day when the 
 news of the taking of Richmond roused the whole coun- 
 try, an enthusiastic friend rushed in upon her with the 
 cry, " The war is over ! Lee has surrendered ! " " Has 
 he?" replied the young girl, indifferently ; ^'well, lam 
 more interested in this new Hebrew grammar than in 
 the war ! " There was so much that was heroic in her 
 nature that she inspired respect ; but it was always sad 
 to see her, not only because her circumstances were so 
 hard, but because she missed so many of the best 
 things of life. 
 
 I heard not long ago of a fine young fellow who asked, 
 " After all, why do we care so much for culture when 
 it only separates us from our kind ? " Certain forms of 
 
8 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 culture do separate us from our kind ; perhaps most of 
 what is commonly called culture does this, but is that 
 the culture we are striving for? I hope not. 
 
 Irma, the heroine of Auerbach's great novel, *' On 
 the Heights," writes in her journal : " That is the point 
 why our modern culture cannot take the place of re- 
 ligion ; religion makes all men equal ; culture, unequal. 
 There must, however, some day be a system of culture 
 which will make all men equal ; then only will it be the 
 right and true. We are yet only at the beginning." 
 
 Shall I not describe to the girls who are to read this 
 book the kind of woman I believe they wish to be? 
 
 They wish to be as strong and beautiful physically as 
 is possible with the bodies which have been given 
 them; they wish to be clear-sighted and intelligent; 
 they wish for wide knowledge, — not to exhibit it, but 
 to use it ; they wish to make their accomplishments a 
 means of expressing beauty in their every-day lives ; to 
 be refined in manner and still more refined in feeling ; 
 and, above all, to be sweet, fresh, truthful, modest, and — 
 again, above all — large-hearted women. 
 
 It is not my province to say much of physical culture, 
 but a girl who neglects it does so at her peril. Without 
 it she will not only suffer bodily, but she can never be 
 mentally or morally what she was meant to be. 
 
 Intellectually, it is best to lay broad foundations. I 
 once heard of a young girl who studied Latin two weeks. 
 
WHAT IS SELF-CULTURE? 9 
 
 She said she just wanted to get an insight into it. I 
 do not think she had a keen sense of humour. She was 
 laughed at by other people ; but I have sometimes won- 
 dered whether her study was necessarily in vain. If 
 she fancied she knew anything of Latin, then she was 
 superficial ; but in two weeks an average scholar might 
 easily learn something of the way Latin differs from Eng- 
 lish, and might in consequence look at many problems of 
 language and literature, and even of history, more wisely. 
 
 A slight knowledge of a subject is not always a super- 
 ficial knowledge. A lady who was a botanist spent an 
 afternoon in explaining to a friend something of the 
 structure of mosses, showing her especially how the 
 whole kingdom of these exquisite little plants is domi- 
 nated by the plan of four. " Oh," cried the enthusiastic 
 listener, " I feel as if I had had a glimpse into a new 
 world ! " One afternoon could not make the student a 
 botanist, but it could give her large thoughts about 
 plants. 
 
 I once heard a young girl give a reason for wishing to 
 graduate from a good school, though she was poor, and 
 sacrifices were required to keep her there for the last 
 few months. " I know well enough," she said, " that 
 another term in school will not ' complete my educa- 
 tion ; ' but I have always thought I should like to take a 
 full course of study and know a little of all the sub- 
 jects which the older and wiser people who planned 
 
lO CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 the course considered a necessary foundation for an 
 education." 
 
 This careful laying of a symmetrical foundation is not 
 like the feverish rushing from one thing to another 
 which characterizes so many girls. " I am too busy to 
 go to see you," said a friend on the street not long ago. 
 " It is because I have my living to earn, and not be- 
 cause I am tearing round like mad after culture, like 
 everybody else in Boston." 
 
 And now, how can we cultivate ourselves? It is the 
 purpose of the following pages to make some practical 
 suggestions in answer to this question. It is not my in- 
 tention to present an exhaustive plan of self-culture, yet 
 I have wished the outline of this little book to be some- 
 what comprehensive, because I feel that a one-sided 
 development is an injury to any one. I think that the 
 cultivation of the physical, the mental, and the moral 
 natures should go hand in hand. There are some prin- 
 ciples of growth which may be applied equally to all 
 these three cases, others which can be best understood 
 by studying them in connection with some special form 
 of culture. 
 
 In this preliminary chapter I will speak of things 
 essential to any self-culture, whether of the body, the 
 mind, or the heart. 
 
 A wise normal-school principal was accustomed to 
 begin his instructions to his pupils by teUing them that 
 
WHAT IS SELF-CULTURE? II 
 
 the first requisite in getting an education was to be 
 teachable. Nobody can help a scholar whose attitude is 
 that of self-sufficiency. No one learns from even the 
 best teacher without being willing to learn. Any in- 
 structor will tell you that when a class is made up of 
 indifferent scholars, it is impossible for him to treat the 
 subject of the lesson in the most interesting way, no 
 matter how conscientiously he may try. On the other 
 hand, there are pupils so full of eagerness to be taught 
 that even a commonplace teacher feels a glow of inspira- 
 tion with them, and thinks of a thousand new illus- 
 trations to make the subject clear. " I always enjoy 
 any class when Miss Frost is in it," said a teacher. 
 " She is not brilliant, but she is so interested in all I say, 
 that I feel like saying the best things." I have heard of 
 a lady who loved poetry who would never teach litera- 
 ture to her pupils because they were so unappreciative 
 that she said she felt as if it would desecrate any poem 
 to mention it to them. No doubt she was partly to 
 blame herself, but you see how each one may be in a 
 measure responsible for what others give to her. 
 
 Even if a teacher's ardour were not influenced at all 
 by the carelessness of the listeners, yet no one will learn 
 who is not willing to be taught. If we think that we 
 know already everything worth knowing, we are not 
 likely to add much to our knowledge. If we approach 
 the very humblest of our teachers in a spirit of criticism, 
 
12 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 we do not get from such an one even the little which 
 might be given us. 
 
 Some one may fancy that teachableness is not neces- 
 sary in self-culture ; but it is more important for those 
 who must work much alone than for others who have 
 pastors and masters appointed them, because those who 
 have few to help them are most in danger of relying on 
 their own narrow view of a subject. No one is so un- 
 fortunate as to be entirely without teachers. At the 
 very worst we can still turn to books with a teachable 
 spirit. But as a matter of fact, any one who is teach- 
 able can usually find a teacher, though not always in the 
 formal sense of the word. For instance, an ill-educated 
 young girl thinks she would like to speak better English, 
 but she cannot go to school. Now, she probably knows 
 some one who speaks well. Perhaps it is her rector, or 
 her employer, or even some companion. If she chooses 
 to pay attention to this friend's manner of speech, she 
 is sure to improve, though the friend may be quite un- 
 conscious of giving any help. Suppose she would like 
 to know something of literature, but cannot buy books. 
 She is undoubtedly acquainted with somebody who 
 would be glad to lend her a volume of Shakspeare, and 
 until she has learned that by heart, she need not be 
 troubled by her narrow surroundings. 
 
 Most of us, however, arc not reduced to such extrem- 
 ities. We have a wealth of opportunity to choose from ; 
 
WHAT IS SELF-CULTURE? 13 
 
 and it must never be forgotten that those who have 
 every advantage that money can buy, and all the culti- 
 vated friends and teachers who work directly and 
 indirectly in their behalf, still have the duty of self- 
 culture laid upon them even more imperatively than 
 their less fortunate fellow-creatures. The young girl 
 who sits through a classical concert with the utmost pro- 
 priety, but who spends her time in examining the bon- 
 nets of her neighbours, or in thinking over the last party, 
 gets no culture from the music, though she may be able 
 to discuss the performers, and say that the soprano had 
 a voice like a steam-whistle, and that the piano was out 
 of tune. A poorer girl who could not go to the concert 
 may envy her, and wish that she too were a connoisseur, 
 but that is simply because she does not know what she is 
 envying. Unless we use our opportunities, we have not 
 the spirit of culture, and any true growth is impossible. 
 
 Teachableness, however, is not the only quality essen- 
 tial to self-culture. We must know how to choose our 
 teachers. That means that we must be self-reliant, — 
 and for a moment some one may think that this spirit 
 is exactly opposed to teachableness ; but self-reliance is 
 not self-sufficiency. 
 
 We are not all capable of choosing the best teachers. 
 A little child, for example, has not much judgment. 
 Some of us never can depend on our own judgment. It 
 
14 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 is right that we should be modest. If we have good 
 reason to think that one of our friends is wiser than we 
 are, we must take counsel of that friend. Nevertheless, 
 if we cannot choose our teachers well, it may sometimes 
 be a positive disadvantage to us to be teachable. To 
 illustrate : there was once a young girl with a great musi- 
 cal endowment. She lived in a village where there was 
 little musical culture. She took some lessons of an 
 agreeable young lady who was considered the best musi- 
 cian in the place. By and by she found her voice failing 
 unaccountably. She decided to go away to a distant city 
 and study with a distinguished master. The master told 
 her that all she had hitherto learned was a hindrance 
 rather than a help to her, for her teacher had not under- 
 stood the need of correct breathing, and she had formed 
 bad habits. The young girl went to work with a will to 
 overcome her faults ; but after she had been struggling a 
 long time, her master told her one day very gently that 
 he had never had a pupil whose faults were so ingrained, 
 and who would require so much time to eradicate them. 
 " If you had not been so determined to do your best, 
 and to follow your teacher's directions exactly," he said, 
 " you would never have learned these false ways so 
 thoroughly ! " Then they both laughed, but the pupil 
 could not help crying at the same time. ** Suppose I 
 should be making the same kind of a mistake again ? " 
 she said roguishly. *'Sure enough," said the master. 
 
WHAT IS SELF-CULTURE? 15 
 
 " Well, think the matter over, and see if you can*t decide 
 for yourself whether to follow my directions." She 
 thought for a while and then said, " When I was at home, 
 I always felt tired after a lesson, and I grew more and 
 more tired as time went on ; but with you I find it is 
 easier and easier to use my voice. So I think I shall risk 
 doing exactly as you tell me." 
 
 Every one of us must love the girl better for her faith 
 in her first teacher and her zeal in obeying her. She 
 certainly gained in moral culture by her docility, for she 
 had chosen the teacher she believed to be best. Still 
 her want of discrimination had involved a great loss 
 musically. In this case it was inevitable. No one could 
 expect a young girl under the circumstances to do better. 
 
 I have before said that we could not get the best 
 which even the humblest could give us by approaching 
 the teacher in a spirit of criticism ; and yet we must 
 exercise some criticism or we shall always be following 
 blind guides. How can we reconcile these two facts? 
 It seems to me we must choose the teacher we believe 
 to be best and then give him a fair chance. If he tries 
 to explain something to us, let us try to understand, 
 instead of wondering if some one else could not do bet- 
 ter. When he has done all he can, and we have done all 
 we can, and still we have not mastered the difficulty, we 
 must seek for another teacher. We must, however, be 
 modest enough to acknowledge that the fault may be in us. 
 
1 6 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 Yet it may be in the teacher. Perhaps you may say that 
 this was substantially what our little singer did, and that 
 she suffered in consequence. That is true. It is not given 
 to most of us to learn our lessons without suffering. But 
 her docility proved a gain in the end. For though it took 
 her so long to conquer her faults that many a fellow- 
 student less highly endowed outstripped her at first, yet 
 her habit of persevering work enabled her to overcome 
 at last; and then this same habit gave her the power 
 to learn true methods of singing with the same thorough- 
 ness, so in the end she did make of her superb voice " all 
 that could be made of the stuff." A friend of hers who 
 took life very easily, and who practised or not according to 
 the mood, seemed for some years to be a much more 
 successful musician ; but her careless habits always went 
 with her, and she never became really great. 
 
 We do want the best teachers in everything. It is a 
 very delicate matter to know how to choose them ; but 
 the first essential is to desire the best. Our power of 
 choosing is the measure of the degree of culture we have 
 reached. Of course those of us who have had few ad- 
 vantages will make a great many mistakes ; but there is 
 one direction in which we need not make mistakes. We 
 always win a moral victory when we try to do the best, 
 even if we are mistaken in what we do. 
 
 There must be many girls who have already realized 
 that in every effort to nourish the moral nature there is 
 
WHAT IS SELF-CULTURE? 1 7 
 
 unbounded help from an unseen power. There must be 
 many who are surprised to find so much help when their 
 own efforts are so weak and few. If there are some who 
 do not yet know this truth from their own experience, I 
 cannot prove it to them. But we can all prove it to 
 ourselves, by making such an effort ; for then we always 
 touch a chord which vibrates through the whole universe. 
 The help waiting for us is so mighty that our feeblest 
 aspiration is never without a response. 
 
II. 
 
 A WORD ABOUT THE BODY. 
 
 THE girls who are willing to read a volume on Self- 
 culture are the very ones most likely to need 
 bodily culture. Yet I shall not say much about it here, 
 partly because other volumes of this series deal with it 
 more fully, and partly because special training is often 
 needed to counteract special defects, and this calls for a 
 physician or a gymnast. 
 
 I cannot omit the subject altogether, however, for it is 
 of vital importance ; at least, it is necessary to be well. 
 Moral culture, it is true, is possible, though difficult, for 
 the most helpless invalid ; but intellectual labour de- 
 mands a sound body. A girl who knows she is injuring 
 her health by study must be willing to restrain her 
 ardour ; if not, she will become a burden to herself and 
 to everybody else, to say nothing of the fact that she 
 will not even accomplish her object. It would be a 
 good plan, however, for her to make sure that it is work 
 which is hurting her. I do not thuik young people 
 often over-study; but many schoa -girls are careless 
 
A WORD ABOUT THE BODY. 1 9 
 
 about taking proper food or exercise or fresh air; and 
 many more ruin their health by parties and late hours ; 
 while there is, alas ! a large class who study selfishly, 
 from ambition alone, who worry so much over their 
 lessons that every one takes it for granted that the 
 lessons themselves are injurious. If you study with the 
 true aim of making " the most of the stuff," it is easy 
 to be serene, even when the stuff proves cotton instead 
 of silk ; or, to drop the metaphor, when you find that 
 your faithful efforts still leave you at the foot of your 
 class. If you mean to make the most of yourself, it will 
 be easy, too, to give the body its due share of attention. 
 
 Those of us who are bom invalids must bear our 
 cross patiently, but those of us who begin life well are 
 usually to blame if we do not continue to be well. 
 
 I must insert a word here for the sake of the poor 
 girls who have but a limited time to study, and who 
 believe that if in that time they fail to gain a diploma, 
 or to set some other definite seal upon their work, it 
 may change their whole course of life. Their tempta- 
 tion is great. With care in other directions, they may 
 be able to study as much as they hope to do; but if 
 not, still it will not do to give up health. It would be 
 better to work in a factory all one's days with a healthy 
 body, and the sunny spirit which is apt to accompany it, 
 with a love for books and a determination to make the 
 most of spare minutes, than to take honours at college, 
 
20 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 and then, breaking down, to become a querulous invalid 
 for the rest of one's days, — though I do not mean that 
 I look on a factory life as either agreeable or healthful 
 in itself. 
 
 As most of us cannot be even well without care, the 
 preservation of health certainly forms a part of the sub- 
 ject of physical culture ; but from culture, in its strict 
 sense, we always hope for improvement. Can we im- 
 prove our bodies, or must we accept them exactly as 
 they are given to us? I am inclined to think the body 
 can be improved. The great trouble is, that after we - 
 reach full maturity physical change is almost impossible ; 
 and where are the old heads on very young shoulders 
 necessary if there is to be any improvement in early 
 youth? Luckily, there are often parents and teachers 
 at hand to guide, and docility is a virtue generally 
 admitted to be a peculiar ornament of a young girl. 
 
 Moreover, some change is possible even for older 
 people ; probably more than we think, if we only had 
 the heart to try for it. For instance, statistics show that 
 the brain measurements of the uneducated do not in- 
 crease after the age of twenty-one, yet they do so per- 
 ceptibly among college students. If exercise can affect 
 the brain, why not other parts of the body ? 
 
 I know a child of five years who has some symptoms 
 of lung disease. She already takes an intelligent interest 
 in daily practising light gymnastics for the expansion of 
 
A WORD ABOUT THE BODY. 21 
 
 the chest, and in breathing long draughts of fresh air. 
 She may not conquer her constitutional tendency, but 
 I think she will. There is Uttle doubt, so physicians 
 are beginning to say, that many an older person who is 
 believed to be doomed to consumption might ward off 
 the terrible disease by proper breathing and a carefully 
 regulated diet. 
 
 Those of us who have studied the rudiments of physi- 
 ology know in a general way that we must keep the 
 digestive organs in good order by food of the right kind 
 and amount; that we shall thus be supplied with good 
 blood, provided we always breathe enough pure air ; and 
 that plenty of exercise will keep our muscles vigorous. 
 But most of us have some weakness in our constitution, 
 and we always count on that to interfere with all our 
 plans. We need to find out our particular defect, and 
 try to cure it. Sometimes we can do that for ourselves. 
 I know a man of splendid physique who was a narrow- 
 chested boy. He says that he brought about the 
 change by simply throwing his shoulders back slowly and 
 forcibly a few times every day for several years. 
 
 Our defect, however, is often of such a nature that we 
 need help to cure it ; probably the services of a physician 
 are seldom required. The gymnasium would often be 
 sufficient if the teacher could make an individual study 
 of each case. Just what can be done, I must not 
 venture to say ; but certainly it is not our duty to be 
 
22 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 resigned to any flaw in our body until we have faith- 
 fully tried to mend it. 
 
 Manual training is fast becoming a part of regular 
 school discipline ; and those of us who must train our- 
 selves should remember that if we would be of use in 
 the world, we need useful hands, and that if we wish to 
 help in making the world beautiful we must have accu- 
 rate hands. It is hard to teach ourselves, but we can 
 demand nice and complete work of ourselves in what- 
 ever we do, even if we simply have beds to make or 
 dishes to wash. I was pained not long ago to see a 
 young girl who had a genuine love of beautiful pictures 
 turning over the leaves of a fine book of photographs 
 with such careless hands that I trembled for the corners. 
 I think the rich are even more careless than the poor in 
 such ways ; but as they replace their soiled and battered 
 treasures more frequently with something new, their 
 faults are less perceptible. 
 
III. 
 
 HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO OBSERVE? 
 
 " 1\ /r Y girls are going abroad this summer,'* said a 
 1 VX gentleman. *' Martha will see everything, and 
 
 Mary will see only what she goes to see ; but then, Mary 
 
 will know best what she wants to see." 
 
 The world over we finti this distinction between the 
 
 natural observers and the natural thinkers. When the 
 
 two are combined we have genius. 
 
 To the girls who see everything I have only a few 
 
 words to say at this point : — 
 
 1. Take pains to look at the things worth seeing. 
 
 2. Take time to think about what you see. 
 
 Let me illustrate these rules by the case of two girls 
 who both had remarkable powers of observation. They 
 were visiting a friend who invited them to take a drive. 
 One of them suggested that they should go to a historic 
 spot in the vicinity which she had read about. The 
 other stipulated that they should drive through the prin- 
 cipal streets of the city on their way. In the evening, 
 while talking over their drive, the latter electrified every- 
 
24 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 body by appearing to know who lived in every house 
 they had passed. She had observed the door-plates and 
 had asked questions. She remembered who lived in 
 the brick houses with bay windows and in the stone 
 mansions with porticos. She remembered the monu- 
 ment they had visited, too ; but her interest in it was 
 languid, and her ideas of the event it celebrated 
 confused. 
 
 The other guest remembered the houses equally well, 
 but she had not noticed whether Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones 
 lived in some commonplace structure. On the other 
 hand, she knew the historic ground inch by inch, and 
 slipping away to the library, went over the narrative 
 again while the details were fresh in her mind. 
 
 Both these girls had the faculty of seeing everything. 
 One of them used it as a means of culture and the other 
 did not. Most persons, even among those who are con- 
 sidered observing, see only certain things. 
 
 I once heard a city boy say, " There is nothing to see 
 in the country." A country boy of about the same age 
 confided to me his opinion that there was nothing to see 
 in the city. 
 
 A gentleman and lady, both enjoying Nature, were 
 driving through the woods one day when the gentleman 
 said, ** What an eye you have for flowers ! I have n't 
 seen one of those you have mentioned for the last half- 
 hour ! " The lady laughed. ** What an eye you have 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO OBSERVE? 2$ 
 
 for rabbits and other * small deer ' ! " she said. " I 
 have n't seen one this whole afternoon." 
 
 So it will be clear that unless we have some definite 
 training in observation, we shall not see half we should 
 like to see. 
 
 How can we learn to observe ? 
 
 I remember the heroine of a novel who describes her 
 own education. She was sent out every day to take a 
 walk, and when she came in she was expected to de- 
 scribe fully and accurately everything she had seen. 
 Such practice is good, and within the reach of everybody. 
 Even a solitary individual can think over what she has 
 seen, and if she finds the mental picture misty, she can 
 go to the same place again and observe more carefully. 
 Still, I am so great an enemy to the waste of any force 
 that I should not think it worth while to spend strength 
 in trying to observe everything ; I should rather look at 
 things which would bear some fruit in thought. 
 
 Any science studied in a rational way is a positive 
 help to one who is learning to observe. Those girls 
 who can have teachers, and who are aware of being un- 
 observant, should study at least one science faithfully 
 with a good instructor. But as I am writing especially 
 for those to whom self-culture means culture by them- 
 selves as well as of themselves, I will describe a few 
 methods of working. 
 
 The sciences most accessible to those who must 
 study alone are, I think, botany and mineralogy. 
 
26 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 I knew a young lady living in the country who wished 
 to understand botany, but who had no teacher. She 
 bought Gray's "Lessons in Botany," — a small book, 
 clearly written, — and thoroughly mastered it. She veri- 
 fied everything so far as she could : she planted beans 
 and watched their growth ; she looked at the shrubs 
 about the garden to see whether they multiplied by suck- 
 ers or stolons ; she noticed how seed-pods were formed, 
 and found out for herself the difference between a black- 
 berry and a strawberry. She gathered leaves and com- 
 pared their shapes with those described by Gray, and 
 soon learned the technical names. 
 
 By the time she had finished the book she had formed 
 the habit of seeing a thousand details of vegetable life 
 which had formerly escaped her, though she was observ- 
 ing. Then she took Gray's " Manual of Botany." This 
 is a large volume full of scientific descriptions which are 
 so apt to daunt the beginner that perhaps most girls 
 could do better with the " Field and Garden Botany " of 
 the same author, though this is much less complete. Our 
 student worked with the artificial key; and beginning 
 with a few common flowers whose English name slie 
 knew, and tracing them till she found their Latin syno- 
 nyms and saw how they were related to other species, 
 she finally learned how to classify and name any unknown 
 flower she might encounter. She soon became an expert 
 in this fascinating work. Of course she made blunders. 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO OBSERVE? 2/ 
 
 Of course she found words She did not understand ; but 
 she looked for these faithfully in the glossary, and as she 
 had to apply her definition on the spot to the flower in 
 hand, she learned it practically, and seldom had to look 
 for the same word twice. It was a pleasure to find out 
 the name of a flower; but it was something more than 
 that, for the necessity of examining every part to make 
 sure that the specimen agreed with the description 
 brought out many a beautiful feature which would other- 
 wise have been unsuspected. In short, our young friend 
 learned to observe. 
 
 A lady who has a world-wide reputation for what she 
 has accomplished in science said to me once, "Oh, I 
 studied botany in the old-fashioned way, — analyzed and 
 pressed three hundred flowers ! You know we do not 
 consider that botany at all now. Nevertheless some of 
 that old-fashioned study is a very necessary foundation 
 for real scientific work." 
 
 It has always seemed to me that we should learn to 
 use our eyes well before we spent much time over a 
 microscope, though that is an instrument which endows 
 us with a new sense. I have always thought, too, 
 that we must learn to know something of individual 
 flowers before we could get much real mental nourish- 
 ment from the delightful effort to comprehend their rela- 
 tionships or from our guesses at the history of their 
 development. I hope, indeed, that every girl who 
 
28 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 decides to learn a little botany for herself will by and by 
 own a fine microscope, and that some time she may 
 study the science philosophically ; but at first I think the 
 outline I have indicated will be enough for her, and it 
 will be impossible for her to follow it without learning to 
 observe some things. She \\dll see more and more. At 
 last she will probably seem to her companions to 
 have what an old professor of botany used to call the 
 " top eye," because she will see so much that they 
 miss. 
 
 The field is inexhaustible. I knew a lady who had 
 taught botany for some years — and had taught it 
 well — who once spent a few weeks of leisure at home, 
 and in the time found one hundred and eighty species 
 of plants before unknown to her in her father's own 
 small field and orchard 1 
 
 Hugh Miller is the most illustrious example of a self- 
 taught geologist. He was a stone-cutter, poor, and know- 
 ing no one who could teach him. He made a collection 
 of all the different kinds of minerals he found in the 
 course of his stone-cutting, and being ignorant of their 
 names, he labelled them i, 2, 3, etc. He examined and 
 compared them till he knew their properties perfectly ; 
 and when several years later he was able to buy a book 
 on mineralogy, all the numbers fell into place as by magic, 
 — he had nothing to do but to substitute the names 
 quartz, feldspar, tourmaline, etc., for the numbers he had 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO OBSERVE? 29 
 
 used so long. He had real genius, and was capable of 
 seeing for himself some of the laws which govern facts ; 
 but even a simple girl who wished to know about minerals 
 could learn something by following his plan. 
 
 It is easier, however, to get help now than it was in 
 his day. Some one who was about to spend ten cents 
 for a Christmas card to send to a friend remembered 
 that this friend was interested in looking at stone-walls, 
 and mailed to her instead a little pamphlet on mineralogy 
 by Mrs. Richards of the Boston Institute of Technology. 
 The young girl receiving it saw that its brief pages were 
 full of instruction for her. She showed it to two or three 
 other girls of similar tastes, and they formed a little club 
 for studying mineralogy with specimens. As they went 
 on, they bought a few larger books, — Dana, Brush, etc., 
 — and they soon became better mineralogists than most 
 girls who study the subject in school. They learned to 
 see everything about their own homes. As the analysis 
 of minerals by Dana's or Brush's method required more 
 knowledge of chemistry than they had, they contented 
 themselves with Crosby's little book of " Tables," which 
 deals chiefly with simple physical tests. They also 
 studied rock-structures with the aid of another little 
 book of Professor Crosby, ** Science Guide No. 12," 
 published by the Boston Natural History Society. The 
 volume costs forty cents, and a hundred typical minerals 
 which illustrate it two dollars more. I give these details, 
 
30 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 thinking that some other girl may Hke to follow their 
 example. I should not of course wish to have any 
 one think that I suppose it is necessary to study exactly 
 in this way to develop one's powers of observation; 
 but this is one way that has been tested, and so it may 
 prove to be a help to somebody. 
 
 I have known several girls who learned something of 
 ornithology, and increased their observing faculty greatly, 
 by simply walking in the fields and woods and listening 
 to the birds. At first the vocal concert seemed bewilder- 
 ing; then they began to distinguish the different per- 
 formers; then they would be fortunate enough to see 
 one of the singers ; and by this time they would be ready 
 to concentrate their attention so that they could give a 
 fair description of the bird. Now all that was wanting 
 was the name. Perhaps they could not find that out for 
 a long time, though one who has access either to a good 
 museum or to illustrated books on ornithology need have 
 little difficulty. None of these girls were very scientific. 
 They did not know which way the arch of the aorta 
 turned in passing from the heart of a bird, — though 
 that is a matter of real interest, — nor even the relation 
 of the two stomachs ; but they had learned to observe, 
 and the world was fuller to them in consequence. 
 
 Modern teachers of botany and zoology insist not only 
 on the study of the objects themselves, but that the 
 pupil should endeavour to draw what he sees. '* \'ou 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO OBSERVE? 3 1 
 
 must observe to draw," says one of them. And that is 
 true, — not only in scientific studies, but in every depart- 
 ment. Even if we do not know how to draw according 
 to any rule, the attempt to reproduce what we see always 
 helps us to see, and so drawing must be a branch partic- 
 ularly recommended to those who wish to improve their 
 powers of observation. This kind of drawing is possible 
 without a teacher, though of course it is better to have 
 instruction. 
 
 One of Mrs. Whitney's heroines, speaking of a visit to 
 Italy, says that her crude attempts to copy some of the 
 Madonnas were worth everything to her, because she 
 saw so much more in the picture in consequence. 
 
 All art study affords training in observation, and par- 
 ticularly in observation of the beautiful, so that it is of 
 the highest value. We want to learn what to see quite 
 as much as how to see. I remember visiting once the 
 exhibition-room of a much-praised artist, and being struck 
 by the vitality of the pictures. Every motion and atti- 
 tude of the figures expressed life. I asked an acquaint- 
 ance, who was a good judge of pictures, how he liked 
 the exhibition. " It is wonderful ! " he said, ** but I do 
 not care for it, because the artist seems to have no per- 
 ception of beauty." I felt that the criticism was just, 
 and it seemed almost a pity that such powers of observa- 
 tion and expression should be spent on inferior objects. 
 Now, a girl working by herself cannot become an artist, 
 
32 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 but I think any one can learn to look at the world with 
 something of an artist's eye simply by daily selecting 
 the most beautiful point within one's horizon, and trying 
 to remember it perfectly with the eyes shut. In the 
 same way we may learn to know pictures accurately. 
 
 As the senses furnish the avenue to convey impressions 
 of the outside world to us, they must be cared for. We 
 must not strain our eyes, lest they fail us, nor may we 
 allow ourselves to take cold lest our ears should grow 
 dull. More than this, we must cultivate our senses. 
 
 I once knew a young girl whose senses were of little 
 use to her. They were apparently perfect as bodily 
 organs, but they did not seem to belong to her. She 
 was always busy thinking. While taking a walk she 
 would reflect upon the fall of the Roman Empire or 
 the rise of the Dutch Republic. She believed in fresh 
 air, but was often unconscious of ill odours. She had 
 a good appetite, but could not tell when her food 
 was well cooked. 
 
 This young girl had a strong desire for all kinds of 
 knowledge. She studied botany and geology and orni- 
 thology. By and by she became a delightful out-door 
 companion. She saw the tiniest flowers hidden in long 
 grass. She knew the colouring and the stnicture of every 
 stone in the wall. *< Without a gim," she had named 
 <* all the birds " by their songs. Yet she was as stupid 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO OBSERVE? 33 
 
 as ever in a city street. She never could tell what 
 fashions the ladies were wearing, she never noticed the 
 shop windows, and she was always losing her way. All 
 of us who are not absolute dunces can " see what we go 
 to see," and her training in the sciences had simply 
 enlarged the circle of things that she looked at inten- 
 tionally. She had trained her eyes and ears to report 
 more readily to the brain than formerly. I do not know 
 that the organs themselves had changed. 
 
 After this it fell to her lot to keep house for a while. 
 " I pity her husband," said her sister, " for she will never 
 know when the bread is sour." Strange to say, however, 
 she set an excellent table. It was one of her principles 
 that everybody should have wholesome food. It had 
 never before been her responsibility to provide it. Now 
 that it was so, she turned her attention to what she ate, 
 and soon discovered the difference between good food 
 and bad. She was accustomed to say that it seemed as 
 if new papillae had come into being on the surface of 
 her tongue, because it was now easy for her to detect 
 tastes which once it was impossible to distinguish even 
 when she concentrated all her energies on the task. 
 Perhaps some physiologist will tell us whether she was 
 right. 
 
 It was on account of the same application of principle 
 to life that she learned to put to rout all bad smells that 
 invaded her house. "A housekeeper should cultivate 
 
 3 
 
34 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 her nose as she does her character," says a friend. Our 
 heroine did this, and achieved success. " But in other 
 people's houses, where I can cast off care/' she would 
 remark, *' I am as unconscious as ever when anything 
 is wrong." 
 
 We say that the power to enjoy involves an equal 
 power to suffer, which is probably true ; but it does not 
 follow that those who enjoy most must actually suffer 
 most. I know a woman keenly alive to the fragrance of 
 flowers who says she is seldom troubled by evil odours. 
 ** I always put myself out of the path of every breeze 
 that is laden with foulness," she says, *' while I always 
 turn toward the * south wind that comes o'er gardens ; * 
 so I get all the pleasure, and little of the pain, that 
 comes from an acute sense." But perhaps the sense or- 
 ganules of the nose which take note of bad odours are 
 not the same as those which perceive pleasant ones. 
 At all events, the keenest scented dogs seem incapable 
 of noticing beautiful perfumes. So it may not even be 
 true that in increasing our power to enjoy we increase 
 our power to suffer. By diligently cultivating agreeable 
 sensations, it may be we render ourselves callous to 
 disagreeable ones. 
 
 What is a musical ear? Many persons of quick hear- 
 ing cannot distinguish musical tones with certainty. 
 Physiologists suggest that of the thousands of little hairs 
 which line the interior of tlie ear, each may vibrate to 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO OBSERVE? 35 
 
 some one tone, while it is probable that the musical 
 notes are appreciated in but one division of the ear. 
 Very likely this part of the ear is furnished with fewer 
 hairs in the case of unmusical people than with others. 
 How is it then that by attention to good music, by 
 always hearing it and practising it, so many people do 
 really learn to distinguish tones? Can there possibly be 
 a change in the ear itself? No doubt the best explana- 
 tion is that the brain learns how to receive the impres- 
 sions on the tympanum. There is the same question in 
 regard to discriminating tints in colour. It is pretty 
 well proved that the cultivated eye has a different sense- 
 lining from the uncultivated one. And Tyndall tells 
 us that each generation adds something to the organ 
 itself. 
 
 We also learn from the scientists that there are in- 
 cipient senses. These seem to be developed by culti- 
 vation. I do not know that the power of finding 
 one's way can be called a special sense, yet the differ- 
 ence between people would almost make us believe it. 
 This would be a sense of such practical value that it is 
 worth some pains to cultivate it. Most of us try to 
 make up for our deficiencies in this respect by tracing 
 our way upon maps, and that does help us. Others say 
 it is all a matter of observation, and that one could learn 
 to do as well as another. I have always wondered if 
 some persons were not born with a correct idea of the 
 
36 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 points of the compass, for after all everything depends 
 on our ability to turn in the right direction. I have a 
 theory that the powers of the stupid might be improved 
 by carrying a pocket-compass. Of course all improve- 
 ment is easiest for the young, and if any girl who reads 
 these words is aware that she has no organ of " locality," 
 I really wish she would try the following experiment for 
 a year. First, let her fix the points of the compass in 
 her own home ; then whenever she goes away from it, 
 even for a short walk, let her see if she still has them 
 in her mind, by comparing her idea of them with the 
 compass itself. It could not do her any harm, and 
 would probably do some good ; she might not create 
 a new sense, but she certainly would become more 
 observing. 
 
 The line between the sense itself and the power of 
 observation is hard to draw. I knew a young lady who 
 became partially deaf, but it was a long time before any 
 one but her aurist knew it, for she was so clever and 
 quick-witted that she watched others, and learned from 
 their motions and expression what they said. An oculist 
 said to a friend the other day, " Ah, you do not tell me 
 the tnith ! You cannot really read at that distance; 
 you are one of those who read with the will and not 
 with the eyes." She was surprised, but when suitable 
 glasses were fitted to her she found he was right. 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO OBSERVE? 37 
 
 So something more than the senses or than observa- 
 tion must always be allowed for in what we see and 
 hear, taste, smell, and touch. There is a certain 
 moral element in observation. Let us decide hence- 
 forth to see not only what we go to see, but what 
 we ought to see. 
 
 Acting on this principle, girls would oftener see when 
 their mothers look tired, or when they are in their 
 brothers' way. I once knew a quiet girl who never 
 seemed to be observing anything, yet when a chair was 
 needed she was always ready to set it in place ; she 
 always opened the door when any one whose hands were 
 full wished to pass ; and in a crowded room she could 
 find for herself the comer where she was least likely to 
 be a stumbling-block for others. Perhaps she could not 
 have told you what everybody wore, but I think she 
 understood the true uses of the observing faculty. 
 
IV. 
 
 HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO REMEMBER? 
 
 FEW in these days are inclined to glorify the mem- 
 ory at the expense of the other mental faculties. 
 I heard a lady say not long ago, in reference to a young 
 girl who had come into her school with extravagant 
 recommendations from former teachers, " She has abil- 
 ity; that is, she can learn by the yard, but I doubt 
 whether she has real intellect." The capacity to learn 
 by the yard, however, is not to be despised, if it is not 
 allowed to overshadow more important powers. For 
 instance, we might choose to have good judgment rather 
 than a good memory. Nevertheless, if we could not 
 remember the facts we were to judge, our judicial pow- 
 ers, admirable as they might be, would prove rather 
 unfruitful. Memory should have its own honourable 
 place in our mental equipment. It converts our vari- 
 ous observations into available knowledge, ready to 
 be acted upon by the judgment. First, we must see 
 clearly, then wc must remember accurately, then we 
 must judge truly. 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO REMEMBER? 39 
 
 Some of us may be able to remember all kinds of 
 things without difficulty, but most of us are not so en- 
 dowed ; and therefore, since we must concentrate our 
 efforts on learning a few of the many things we should 
 like to know, it is well to consider what we most wish to 
 retain before we make plans how to accomplish our 
 object. 
 
 First, we want to remember whatever it is our duty to 
 remember. 
 
 As our duties differ, I will not say much in detail on 
 this head. I have heard of a lady so engrossed in study 
 that she forgot to see that dinner was provided for the 
 family; I have no doubt she enjoyed some sublime 
 thoughts meantime, but they could not have really ele- 
 vated her character. Girls sometimes forget to feed 
 their pets; they often forget little commissions given 
 them by their mothers; they forget to take the right 
 books to school; they forget where their lessons are, 
 and a hundred things which inconvenience other per- 
 sons as well as themselves. It is certainly a school- 
 girl's duty to know her lessons, even when she sees no 
 particular advantage in them, and although it is true that 
 teachers sometimes give absurd lessons. I suppose we 
 all know, in a general way, what our special duties are, 
 and can apply the formula for ourselves. 
 
 Sometimes we say we cannot remember the things 
 we ought. I have been told that Dr. James Freeman 
 
40 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 Clarke once preached a sermon on this subject. He 
 said we could remember whatever we felt a deep interest 
 in remembering. During the following week he discov- 
 ered one day that he had entirely forgotten something 
 which caused him great personal loss and annoyance, — 
 something which he had a deep interest in remember- 
 ing. The next Sunday when he entered the pulpit, he 
 took occasion, with his usual candour, to mention the 
 circumstance, and to retract all he had said the Sun- 
 day before. Nevertheless it is true that the things we 
 most want to remember are those which it is our duty 
 to remember. 
 
 Second, we want to remember whatever will add to 
 the happiness of others. This is perhaps a branch of 
 our first proposition ; yet I emphasize it, because there 
 are so many small acts not strictly our duty which we 
 could do every day, and which we should be glad to do 
 if we could only think of them. These are the 
 
 "Little nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love," 
 
 — "unremembered," that is, after they are done. The 
 quality we call " thoughtfulness for others," which lends 
 a special charm to the character of some young girls, is 
 greatly due to this fine use of memory. 
 
 In these two directions we want to remember certain 
 definite things, and we arc justified in resorting to the 
 most artificial means for the purpose. If I have prom- 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO REMEMBER? 41 
 
 ised to lend you a book, it is quite right for me to 
 remind myself of it by changing a ring to another finger. 
 Much more would this be right if I had reason to sup- 
 pose I should forget to return a book I had borrowed. 
 
 We might perhaps use artificial means to remember 
 anything which would add to our own happiness, though 
 here we are less likely to forget. Still, I once knew a 
 young man who was so busy getting his affairs in order 
 for his wedding journey that he forgot to look at the 
 clock, and missed the train that was to take him to 
 the ceremony. 
 
 But for any intellectual purpose, artificial stimulants 
 to the memory are often worse than useless. 
 
 Now, third, we want to remember as many facts as we 
 can make use of in any way, either to aid our judgment 
 or to enlarge our minds. I hope that few of us — few 
 even of girls fourteen or fifteen years old — fancy that 
 isolated facts have much value. Once during my child- 
 hood a lecturer came into our village with the announce- 
 ment that he had invented a system for remembering 
 everything. He selected one of the brightest little girls 
 in school, and after training her one afternoon, he ex- 
 hibited her to his audience in the evening. He asked 
 for dates of the most disconnected facts one after an- 
 other, and she gave every one triumphantly. I am not 
 quite sure that she could not have learned them as 
 quickly without any system, though in that case she 
 
42 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 would have probably forgotten them sooner. Then the 
 lecturer explained his method of teaching her. I re- 
 member but one example, — she had said that Judge 
 Story died in 1845. Each figure corresponded to some 
 letter in the professor's scheme. The " i " being disre- 
 garded, "845" represented f r 1. This was to remind 
 the learner of the word " farewell " from which it was an 
 easy step to say that Judge Story bade farewell to the 
 world at that date ! She then retranslated the word 
 " farewell " into figures, and had won her fact. I am 
 positive that she had no idea who Judge Story was or 
 why it was essential to know the date of his death. In- 
 deed if any one tells me that I am wrong in that partic- 
 ular I shall not insist that I am not ; or rather, I know I 
 am not mistaken in the date, but it may be that it was 
 some other judge who died then ! So it does not seem 
 to me that this was a very fructifying fact for either of us 
 to know. Moreover I have often wondered what could 
 have been done with any other events which had hap- 
 pened to occur in 1845, ^^^ instance those connected 
 with the Mexican War, since ** farewell " would have 
 stood uncompromisingly for every one of them. 
 
 There are many memory-systems extant, — some 
 no doubt much better than others, — but it is a 
 great question whether arbitrary facts, however firmly 
 fixed in the mind, do not on the whole cumber the 
 ground instead of enriching it. Of course any fact may 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO REMEMBER? 43 
 
 sometime be of use. Thrifty housekeepers often save 
 odds and ends with the plea that " sometime the want of 
 it will be more than the worth of it." Even in the case 
 of housekeepers it may be questioned whether it is wise 
 to fill small rooms with debris which has only a prospec- 
 tive usefulness ; and what shall we say of a Toodles who 
 actually goes out and buys a coffin because " sometime 
 it will be handy to have it in the house " ? The brains 
 of most of us are too limited in capacity to be crowded 
 with a great deal of unassorted material. We cannot 
 afford to know everything. We cannot therefore afford to 
 use a system which insists on teaching us everything. 
 
 In one of Miss Edgeworth's stories, — ** The Good 
 French Governess," I think, — she describes a young 
 girl who had been taught entirely by memorizing facts. 
 Isabella expected to astonish her new governess by the 
 glibness with which she recited a list of the dates of in- 
 ventions, beginning, I dare say, with Greek fire and com- 
 ing down to the steam-engine. The governess, however, 
 refused to be overwhelmed, but asked the young lady 
 what was the use of all these dates. The pupil coloured, 
 stammered, and finally said it was certainly a good thing 
 to know when paper was first used. The governess was 
 not easily persuaded even of this ; but at last glancing 
 over the list again, she noticed that many years had 
 elapsed between the invention of paper and that of 
 printing — far be it from me to know how many ! 
 
44 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 *'That is worth knowing," she said. "It shows how 
 very slowly invention progressed in those days." You 
 see, with her, facts to be worth anything must lead to 
 an end. 
 
 However, it is no doubt an innocent ambition to wish 
 to be well-informed, so I will add to the list of things we 
 want to remember — 
 
 Fourth, the things that others about us know and 
 expect us to know. 
 
 This kind of memory has a practical value. It helps 
 us to appear well ; sometimes it helps us to earn money ; 
 but so far as the culture either of our mind or character 
 is concerned, it is not worth much. 
 
 When I was a girl I heard a cousin of mine, then in 
 college, tell the story of a fellow-student who was dis- 
 covered reading one of Scott's novels in a corner of the 
 library, and who inquired very earnestly, " Who was this 
 *Waverley,' anyhow?" That struck the group of cousins 
 as a great joke. None of us could understand how any- 
 body who could read could be so ignorant. Since then, 
 however, I have no doubt that all of us have made 
 blunders which stamped us as equally ignorant in the 
 estimation of those who detected them. I should be 
 able to forgive the young reader in the library now, 
 especially if I found that he was capable of enjoying 
 Scott, which some of those who have " Waverley's " 
 biography at their tongue's end seem to be incapable of 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO REMEMBER? 45 
 
 doing. We are always ready to laugh at anybody who 
 does not know what we know, and that is one reason we 
 have such agonies of fear lest somebody should discover 
 the weak spots in our own armour. But why should 
 we be ashamed not to know a thing? No one can know 
 ever}lhing. The greatest men, if they would take you 
 into their confidence, would probably tell you that they 
 had sometimes made mistakes at which a schoolboy 
 would blush; yet the most philosophical among us do 
 suffer more from involuntary slips of memory than from 
 the infraction of some weightier matters of the law. 
 And not altogether without reason; for all of us who 
 have had refined and educated parents, and who have 
 had the ordinary school advantages, do know certain cur- 
 rent facts, unless we are extraordinarily stupid, or have 
 been culpably careless. We condemn ourselves when 
 we admit our ignorance. Yet not one of us is infallible ; 
 so when we laugh at other people's blunders, let us be 
 good-natured, and when we give other people occasion 
 to laugh at us, let us still be good-natured ; and more- 
 over let us not be too downcast because of our short- 
 comings, but try to improve. 
 
 And now, at last, how shall we make our own all the 
 manifold facts we want to remember? 
 
 We can fix the host of little items belonging to our 
 duties by making memoranda in a pocket note-book and 
 consulting these every day. A lady connected with a 
 
46 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 great Boston daily paper relates that the number of de- 
 tails she feels obliged not to forget is so great that she 
 keeps a diary laid out for months in advance, and that in 
 May of one year she entered the memorandum, " Nov. 
 
 12. To be married to ." Perhaps we should 
 
 not all need such scrupulous notes as that, but I think 
 any of us may use those we do need without compunc- 
 tion. I know a young lady who is confidential clerk in 
 a large business house. She said a few days ago that she 
 was almost beside herself with the number of things she 
 must remember, but that she supposed it would be 
 ruinous to her memory if she kept lists of them. I 
 believe she was quite wrong. Her object is to do cer- 
 tain things at certain times, not to be able to repeat the 
 list in alphabetical order. If she could only relieve her 
 mind of all this unnecessary strain, she could exercise it 
 sufficiently for sound health upon those things which she 
 really wants to be laid up in its store-house forevermore. 
 Of course she must remember enough of the business to 
 guide her intelligently in carrying it on. 
 
 For learning those things which are to be a perma- 
 nent addition to our stock of knowledge, a few simple 
 principles must be observed. 
 
 I. We must get an accurate impression of what we 
 want to remember. 
 
 This is closely connected with our powers of observa- 
 tion. Those who obser\'e well do not forget what they 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO REMEMBER? 47 
 
 see. But we want to remember a great many things 
 besides those we see. In studying history, for instance, 
 suppose we think that it would be a disgrace to any 
 American woman not to know the principles laid down 
 in the Declaration of Independence; we must study 
 that document, not only as a whole, but sentence by 
 sentence, and make sure that we see exactly what it 
 means. More than that, we must read its history, and 
 find out what we can of the motives which influenced 
 the various signers ; and by that time, I think, we might 
 have our " accurate impression." If we consider study 
 of this kind beyond us, we may be right ; but in that 
 case we shall have to give up learning the Declaration 
 of Independence. 
 
 I once knew a young woman whose early education 
 had been neglected. At last the opportunity to go to 
 school came to her. She was full of ambition, and ready 
 to study night and day; but she could never learn a 
 lesson. She failed so utterly one day on some rules for 
 parsing that the teacher spoke to her privately of the 
 matter. The poor girl grew red in the face, and then 
 burst into tears. '' I studied. Miss Smith, till I fainted 
 away," she said. And yet she did not know the very 
 first rule : " Adjectives and participles belong to nouns 
 and pronouns." The teacher wondered how such hard 
 study could produce such a small result, and on inquiry 
 learned that the poor student, in her desire to be thor- 
 
48 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 ough, had studied each word twenty times before going 
 on to the next, — " Adjectives, adjectives, adjectives, 
 etc. ; and, and, and, etc. ; participles, participles, parti- 
 ciples, etc." She had a perception of the separate 
 words, but naturally saw no connection between them. 
 We need a whole impression of whatever we are trying 
 to learn. 
 
 2. We must think about what we are learning. 
 
 As long as we are looking at an object, or reading 
 about an event, our minds may wander without our 
 knowing it. But when we shut our eyes and try to re- 
 call the object or the event, we find out our deficiencies 
 at once, and can go back to the study with an intelligent 
 idea of the way to supply them. We must continue to 
 do this till we have thoroughly learned what we are tr}'ing 
 to learn. We shall succeed in the end, unless we have 
 undertaken some subject really beyond our powers ; and 
 in that case, the sooner we find it out the better. 
 
 3. Frequent repetition is necessary to keep anything 
 in our minds. 
 
 Even when we have mastered some subject com- 
 pletely for the time being, yet if we put it aside and go 
 on to another subject, we shall find on coming back to it 
 a few months later that some of the outlines are begin- 
 ning to fade. We must see that they are traced firmly 
 once more, or we shall soon lose the whole picture. If, 
 however, we learned the subject thoroughly at first, it is 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO REMEMBER? 49 
 
 easy to review it. " My sister has to spend more time 
 than I do over advance lessons," said a school-girl, 
 with a roguish smile ; *' but I notice that it saves her 
 time when we come to reviews." And I have heard a 
 music-teacher say that a pupil who had once learned to 
 play a piece of music without stumbling could take it up 
 again years after with the certainty of being able to play 
 it correctly with half an hour's practice. 
 
 There are various kinds of repetition suited to the 
 different things we try to learn. For instance, let us 
 consider a moment the different ways of studying his- 
 tory and poetry, for these two studies are particularly 
 adapted to the exercise of the memory, though that is 
 by no means the highest use of either of them. 
 
 In a poem every word has a value ; it cannot be 
 changed or misplaced without destroying the beauty of 
 the passage. We must learn poetry verdattfn ; indeed, 
 unless we do so we never quite take in the full meaning 
 of even our favourite poems. This is one reason why 
 learning poetry has such an elevating influence. Once 
 learned, it must be repeated over ^nd over again, every 
 day at first, then every week perhaps, and then at longer 
 intervals ; and we must not be con ented with making a 
 slip here and there. But all this repetition takes time, 
 and has neither the mental nor the moral value of the 
 first learning of a poem. Besides, we may wish to learn 
 something new. I am sure none of us can afford to let 
 
 4 
 
50 CHATS WITH GIRLS OX SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 the habit of studying the best poetry ever be lost out of 
 our daily lives. We need its high companionship con- 
 stantly. Fortunately, though it is often thought that 
 young people learn more readily than older ones, it is 
 not altogether true. A middle-aged friend of mine tells 
 me that she has made it a point to learn a few lines of 
 poetry every day for many years, and that she does so 
 more and more easily ; but she says she often forgets 
 what she learns, simply because it is impossible to re- 
 peat the great numbers of poems she knows as often as 
 she could repeat the comparatively small number she 
 knew when a girl. Some of us think it would be hard 
 to find time every day to learn even a few lines ; but 
 surely we must give a part of every Sunday to such ele- 
 vating study, and if we learn half a dozen lines on Sun- 
 day, and take pains to repeat them every day through 
 the week, we shall soon have much good treasure laid 
 up where moth and rust will not cornipt. 
 
 It would be mere folly to learn history verbatim. 
 Here we want facts first as a foundation, but far more, 
 relations between facts. It may be a good exercise for 
 us when an examiner asks us all sorts of questions in a 
 breath : " Who won the battle of Waterloo? " *' When 
 was Charles the First beheaded?" "What is the Ro- 
 setta Stone?" Indeed, I once knew a very entertain- 
 ing teacher of history who contended that the true way 
 to equip her pupils to meet sudden demands upon them 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO REMEMBER? 5 1 
 
 was to ask them such a jumble of questions every day. 
 " Nobody in society," she would say, " will ever inquire 
 whether you can give a clear account of the English 
 Revolution or not, but anybody may turn to you and 
 ask when Charles the First was beheaded." She was 
 right; but after all culture does not consist in being 
 able to answer other people's questions, — though, in- 
 deed, as that is very convenient, I think a little sharp 
 practice of this kind would occasionally be good for most 
 of us. We like to have our facts well in hand, ready for 
 instant use ; but if we hope to remember much of his- 
 tory, or to make it in any way vital to us, we must study 
 very differently. We must take an epoch as a whole ; 
 we must learn about all the great men of the time, and 
 understand their acts ; we must learn the geography of 
 the country, the condition of its arts and sciences and 
 literature, until all our study blends and forms a living 
 whole. When we have once studied an epoch in this 
 way, we shall always remember the main features of it ; 
 but we shall forget details, and it would of course be 
 impossible to go over all the same ground again and 
 again. It is not even desirable, for many of the details 
 we have forgotten were only of use as they served to 
 make the whole picture more vivid, and other details 
 would answer the purpose as well. So I should say, that 
 if you find yourself forgetting the particulars of the hfe 
 of Washington, which you perhaps read in Mr. Scudder's 
 
52 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 little book in the "Riverside Library for Young People," 
 it would be best not to re-read that book, but to take 
 up the larger " Life " by Mr. Lodge, where you will have 
 the important facts differently presented with some ad- 
 ditional ones ; the next time you find yourself doubt- 
 ful on these points, read Irving's "Washington," and 
 so on. 
 
 Suppose you have read a general history of England. 
 It would be a good plan to take next a general history 
 of France, — for there has been a constant interaction 
 between the two countries for hundreds of years, — and 
 in the story of France you will review the main events 
 of the English story from a new sLindpoint. 
 
 And now a word as to dates. There are not more 
 than twenty or thirty dates that it is absolutely necessary 
 for us to know ; but it is often disgraceful not to know 
 the epoch in which any event occurred. For instance, 
 we need not feel ourselves ruined for life if we should 
 happen to think Columbus discovered America in 
 1493, — though I admit that is one of the mistakes an 
 American girl ought not to make ; but to fancy that he 
 discovered it in 1392 or 1592 would be fatally wrong, — 
 though the figures themselves would be no more askew, 
 — because such an error would affect our whole con- 
 ception of the last part of the fifteenth century. If we 
 know the story of the discovery well, the one date, 1492, 
 will tell us a great many things, — that Ferdinand and 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO REMEMBER? 53 
 
 Isabella ruled Spain at that time, that Henry VIL was 
 then on the throne of England, etc. If we know how to 
 group our facts, eighteen dates will give us approxi- 
 mately the time of every great event of the Christian 
 era. 
 
 I should be willing to learn a few dates artificially ; 
 and I am not one of those who despise the lists of 
 Roman emperors and English kings. These lists are 
 good pegs to hang miscellaneous knowledge upon until 
 we have collected enough of it to arrange in some or- 
 ganic form. Nevertheless I think we should all beware 
 of often applying artificial stimulants to our memory. 
 
V. 
 
 HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO THINK? 
 
 IF we have learned how to observe in any broad 
 sense, and if we have then learned how to fix 
 essential facts in our memory, we shall be already far on 
 the way toward learning to think, for in intelligent 
 observation or memory we must use judgment. 
 
 For example, we look at a wild rose till we know 
 every part in detail, and then we examine a strawberry- 
 blossom. If we have made the observation faithfully, it 
 will not take a teacher to tell us that the two plants 
 belong to one family. A spark of understanding will 
 flash across from one set of obser\-ations to the other ; 
 we shall then be ready to test the whole floral kingdom 
 by comparing every member of it with a rose. Is this 
 flower like a rose, or is it not? If not, how does it 
 differ? One might study botany on an uninhabited 
 island in this way, and group plants naturally, making 
 a close approximation to the well-known written sys- 
 tems. A lily is far removed from a rose, and both are 
 very different from a dandelion. Which of the three 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO THINK? 55 
 
 does a buttercup most resemble ? The first steps in the 
 study of any science are steps of observation, but they 
 lead directly up to comparison and inference, and in 
 other words, to judgment. 
 
 Or suppose we are trying to learn something of an 
 epoch in history, — for instance, the French Revolution. 
 We cannot even remember the leading facts unless we 
 understand them. We must think of the causes which 
 brought on the Revolution before we can remember the 
 difference between the Jacobins and the Girondists. 
 We must consider the character and circumstances of 
 individual actors in the drama before we can remember 
 unerringly the part they took. Was Madame Roland 
 a Jacobin or a Girondist? The girls who can answer 
 that question six months after they have read her hfe 
 will be able to do so because they have thought about 
 her character and have understood something of her 
 relation to the times. To remember essential things, 
 we must first use our judgment in deciding what 
 are essential. 
 
 I have already spoken of Science and History as 
 studies which cultivate respectively observation and 
 memory ; but it will be clear that they both have a far 
 higher use in teaching us to think. The sciences which 
 are learned principally by trying experiments — like 
 chemistry and physics — are especially of use here, for 
 we always have to ask ourselves what the experiment 
 
$6 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 proves? History develops the power to form a dif- 
 ferent class of judgments ; and a broad study of history 
 is indispensable to all who wish to be able to think 
 wisely on current affairs. 
 
 For precision of thought there is no instructor like 
 mathematics, and geometry beyond all other branches 
 of them. Such an overwhelming majority of girls hate 
 mathematics that it is hard to know just how to persuade 
 them of its importance. I knew one indefatigable 
 teacher, who used to labour with each pupil in private 
 till she had absolutely convinced her that she (the 
 pupil) wanted to master her mathematics in the most 
 complete and thorough way. This teacher not only had 
 a beautiful and noble character, but possessed such sym- 
 pathy and power of attraction that the girls' love for her 
 probably formed a preponderating factor in their en- 
 thusiasm for the study. At all events, they yielded, to 
 the very last girl ; the most stupid one found that she 
 could understand what she had thought she could not ; 
 and that wonderful teacher set her impress upon the 
 school, so that the high standard in mathematics was 
 maintained there long after she was in her grave. More 
 than that, all her scholars carried out into life the habit 
 of asking, " Why? " when any new course of thought or 
 action opened before them; and '*Why?" is one of 
 those little words which have a far-reaching effect in 
 teaching us how to think on all subjects. 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO THINK? 57 
 
 Most people — boys as well as girls — are naturally 
 rather dull at mathematics; but boys like them better 
 than girls do, and they are always taught that practical 
 success in life depends on knowing at least arithmetic 
 well. Girls have practical need of arithmetic, too, 
 though they do not often require quite as many of its 
 technicalities. But they are tacitly encouraged to in- 
 dulge their dislike, which is usually extreme, on the 
 ground that they will not need to earn their living by 
 figures, though, as a matter of fact, a great many of 
 them are obliged to do this. 
 
 My present plea for mathematics, however, is based 
 entirely on their importance in teaching precise thinking. 
 I know girls' schools in which they hold an honoured 
 place, and others in which they are virtually ignored. 
 In the latter the girls sometimes have a broader culture 
 when they leave school, but their tone of mind is less 
 vigorous, and ten years later, the mathematicians have 
 often distanced them in general culture. Of course, 
 exclusive devotion to mathematics would be narrowing ; 
 though when they are carried into the domains of 
 Chemistry and Crystallography, etc., they do open a 
 vast and splendid territory to the thinker. As I have 
 yet to hear of the girls' school which lays undue stress 
 on such study, I think it safe to advise every girl who 
 reads these pages to make the most of her opportunities 
 in this direction. No doubt too much precision is fatal 
 
S8 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 to large judgments, but I do not happen to know any 
 girl who is in danger of being too precise. 
 
 An accomplished lady, who during several years had 
 taught the same set of girls a variety of subjects, ranging 
 from mathematics and physics to botany and rhetoric, 
 said : " It was more delightful at the time to take them 
 botanizing in the woods, or to discuss the figures of 
 speech, than to drill them in mathematics ; but in look- 
 ing back on the work, the mathematics give me most 
 satisfaction, for I could see how the minds of the girls 
 gained in power from year to year." 
 
 But as I write my thoughts are often with those girls 
 who have no teachers and must learn their mathematics 
 alone. This is not always a misfortune. I am sorry to say 
 that a great deal of the confusion girls find in mathema- 
 tics is due to incompetent primary teaching. Advanced 
 teachers are usually capable, but the mischief is done 
 before the pupil comes into their hands. Now, a girl 
 who finds mathematics a puzzle, and who has no teacher 
 to help her, may be excused for not trying to do great 
 things in this department ; but there are two subjects 
 perhaps within her reach. One is mental arithmetic, — 
 altogether the most important part of arithmetic. I do 
 not believe there are many young women twenty years 
 old who are sufficiently in earnest to study Warren Col- 
 burn's ancient " Mental Arithmetic " fifteen minutes a 
 day, following his processes exactly, who could not con- 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO THINK? 59 
 
 quer the book in six months, and be the better for it 
 ever afterwards. 
 
 The other subject I would recommend is geometry, 
 for here the reasoning is not so based on arithmetic and 
 algebra that ignorance of these will be an insuperable 
 obstacle in the path. Take any text-book, learn the 
 axioms at the beginning, set down the first proposition 
 with its figure on paper, and then shut your book and 
 see if you do not already know enough to prove the 
 proposition ; if not, you will have to read the proof, but 
 that is no reason why you should not try to prove the 
 next proposition for yourself. It will be as interesting 
 as an enigma and more productive of results. Of 
 course, if you have no gift whatever for geometry, you 
 can easily stop at any time ; but if you have any natural 
 capacity for it, you will succeed with some propositions, 
 and you will understand the proofs you are obliged to 
 read. When you finish the book you will know a great 
 deal more of geometry than most school-graduates do. 
 And after such a course you will never be as contented 
 with loose and vague arguments on any topic as you 
 were before. 
 
 I have heard of a man who reads a new book in the 
 following manner. He first thinks over its subject, and 
 perhaps puts down on paper the headings of the differ- 
 ent subdivisions which he believes ought to be treated. 
 
6o CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 Then he refers to the table of contents, where of course 
 he finds some points which he has omitted, though 
 sometimes perhaps he has taken a more comprehensive 
 view than the author. Then he considers the question 
 to be treated in each chapter, and settles in his mind his 
 own opinions upon it. Now, when he reads the chapter, 
 he is prepared to judge whether his first ideas were 
 correct or not. If the author has anything to teach him, 
 he is pretty sure to learn it. Such a plan of reading 
 would not do for all kinds of books, but is of great use 
 in cases where an appeal is made to our judgment. I 
 should be veiy glad if some young girl would try the 
 experiment with the little volume I am now writing. 
 Let her take the subject of any chapter in the book, and 
 think about t before she reads it. Perhaps her ideas 
 would be clearer if she would write them down. When 
 she reads the chapter, she may find that she has antici- 
 pated all the good advice I mean to give her, and that 
 she positively disagrees with some of my opinions : she 
 will then be all ready to consider the opinions wliich 
 those wiser than I have expressed on the same subject in 
 better books. Whether what I have to say is useful in 
 itself or not, the exercise will have been useful to her 
 in teaching her how to think. 
 
 It will be still more to the purpose if she will try the 
 same experiment with some masterpiece of literature. 
 I remember an earnest young girl who was interested in 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO THINK? 6l 
 
 Plato's " Dialogues,'* and coming to the question, " Can 
 virtue be taught? " she set herself the task of writing a 
 composition on the subject. Of course she was all the 
 more able to appreciate the words of Socrates when she 
 came to read them. 
 
 To learn to think, we must think. If we do not know 
 how to think, we must try to think. Every day brings 
 experiences which ought to make us ask ourselves the 
 pregnant little questions, "How?" and'* Why?" We 
 must not grudge the strength and time necessary to 
 answer them for ourselves; but we must answer them 
 humbly. We must hold ourselves ready for new light, 
 and be willing to correct our judgments by comparing 
 them with those of wiser thinkers. We know books and 
 people to be trusted. Let us go to them for help, while 
 we hold ourselves free to weigh their views in the bal- 
 ances with our own. This attitude of mind will, I feel, 
 do more in teaching us to judge justly than any special 
 study ; logic itself could hardly help us so much ; and 
 a serious study of logic is rather too difficult for most 
 young girls who have to work alone, though it seems 
 to me that even the alphabet of the science is worth 
 something. 
 
 Still, there are certain studies which are particularly 
 beneficial to those who are trying to form the judgment. 
 The science of criticism is of the greatest value. Read 
 your Shakspeare, for instance, not so that you may be 
 
62 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 ready with quotations, but in such a way that you may 
 understand life and character. Think of the heroes and 
 heroines, and try to grasp their motives of action. Try 
 their deeds by the highest standards, and see whether 
 they will meet the test. You need not read a single vol- 
 ume of criticism to do this, you must simply live with 
 these great men and women. Afterwards you may com- 
 pare your thoughts with those of the critics, and you will 
 fmd that others have a wider horizon than yours, and that 
 with them you can climb to higher mountain-tops. 
 
 And then, for the best thought one must study 
 poetry. Matthew Arnold says that " the essential part 
 of poetic greatness is the noble and profound applica- 
 tion of ideas to life." This is the spirit for the study 
 of poetry. We must look for the noble and profound 
 ideas, and endeavour to apply them to life. Perhaps 
 most young girls will find it hard to do this at first with- 
 out help. But does not the most obscure among you 
 know some one who can help you a little, if in no other 
 way, at least by suggesting books to read ? At any rate, 
 you can begin with Shakspeare, and you cannot help 
 being elevated by constant contact with so grand a 
 mind. I heard a lady say once, in speaking of an ac- 
 quaintance, ** She would be more likely to know that a 
 poem was a good one, if she saw it in a book than if 
 she saw it in a newspaper ! " Now, you ought to know 
 whether a poem gives you high thoughts, whether you 
 
HOW SHALL WE LEARN TO THINK? 63 
 
 see it in a book or in a newspaper. But inasmuch as 
 there is more good poetry in books than in periodicals, 
 you will learn discrimination more quickly if you spend 
 your time over the great poets than if you waste it in 
 trying to sift the wheat from the chaff in the daily news- 
 papers,— at least at first. By-and-by the time will come 
 when you will know a fine thing in a moment wherever 
 you see it by this infallible test, — it will uplift and 
 comfort you. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE STUDY OF LANGUAGES. 
 
 I HOPE I have already made it clear that all study 
 should have for its object the enlargement of the 
 mind and the development of the character. When we 
 begin to consider the claims of special studies our path is 
 not always quite plain. I am one of those who believe in 
 the fullest possible education for everybody. To history, 
 literature, the sciences, mathematics, music, and art, I 
 would gladly add as many languages as the student can 
 really master, provided — and this is a very important 
 stipulation — that nothing more important is sacrificed, 
 — health, for instance, or happiness, or 
 
 " A heart at leisure from itself 
 To soothe and sympathize." 
 
 As a matter of fact, however, so complete a curriculum 
 is not possible for most of us. Capacity and circum- 
 stances decide what each can do. Now, while I by na 
 means despise the man who " can ask for gingerbread 
 in twenty languages," I think most of us will not use our 
 lives to the best advantage in studying so many different 
 
THE STUDY OF LANGUAGES. 65 
 
 tongues ; and I think it would be a real misfortune for 
 those young girls who are trying to learn something 
 without the aid of a teacher to spend most of their time 
 over languages, as I know they are often tempted 
 to do. 
 
 There is a story to the point told in the recent memo- 
 rial, "William Ellis and his Conduct-Teaching." As 
 Mr. Ellis's name will not be familiar to most girls, I 
 will say that he was a rich business man who devoted all 
 his spare time and money to the founding of schools 
 which should make conduct the most important branch 
 of study. He was at one time employed to' teach the 
 royal children of England, and one of them, at least, — 
 the present ex-Empress of Gennany, — always held her 
 teacher in reverent remembrance. He was once con- 
 sulted by a lady who was looking for an instructor in 
 Spanish, I think, for her daughter, who had already 
 been taught three or four other languages. " I sup- 
 pose your daughter understands astronomy?" he asked. 
 <'0h, no." *' Botany, perhaps?" "No." And so he 
 continued his questions, always receiving a negative 
 answer. At last he said, smiling, "Isn't it almost a* 
 pity to give her another opportunity of advertising her 
 ignorance ? " 
 
 The truth is, language rightly studied is of the highest 
 value ; but as a mere accomplishment, it is one of the 
 most barren of pursuits. I am very sorry to say that 
 
 5 
 
66 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 most girls study the languages — especially the modem 
 languages — to which they are most attracted, chiefly as 
 accomplishments. Now we will not be unfair even to 
 accomplishments ; so let us admit at once that it is a 
 fine thing for a girl to know French, or German, or 
 Italian well, to speak it with a perfect accent, to write 
 it fluently and correctly, and to read it at sight. And 
 then let us immediately add that such a genuine accom- 
 plishment as that is not only very rare, but entirely 
 impossible, unless the pupil is both rich and gifted, and 
 we all know such a combination is unusual. 
 
 Mr. Hamerton says, in his " Intellectual Life," that no 
 one can possibly learn more than three languages per- 
 fectly ; and that the conditions necessary for even so 
 many are, that one parent should be a native of one 
 country, the other of another, and that the family should 
 live in the third. As a general thing, even those who 
 live in foreign countries do not speak two languages per- 
 fectly. If they master the new language entirely, they 
 find themselves forgetting certain idioms of their mother- 
 tongue. 
 
 So, to be really accomplished in any language, we 
 must have opportunities which involve money. And any 
 one who has witnessed the painful spectacle of the vast 
 numbers of girls' schools in which all other education is 
 made secondary to the study of French, and who knows 
 how far the pupils are in the end from reading, writing, 
 
THE STUDY OF LANGUAGES. 6j 
 
 and speaking the French language correctly, will not 
 need to be told that more than average powers must 
 supplement riches in order that French may be an ac- 
 complishment. I dwell a little on this point, because a 
 knowledge of French is looked upon as one of the hall- 
 marks which distinguish a lady; and this is the igiiis 
 fatuus which allures many a poor girl to spend her time 
 in trying to acquire it. I do not wish to discourage the 
 study, but merely to show just what measure of success 
 is possible. A French accent, for instance, is almost a 
 monopoly of the rich ; though very few of them ever gain 
 it, for it can only be caught by constantly hearing the 
 language spoken by cultivated teachers. I sometimes 
 think that one reason the rich prize the accent so much 
 is because they have such an advantage over the poor in 
 that respect, while a clever student may easily win the 
 honours for thoroughness in the grammar or literature. 
 At all events, they do prize it ; and few teachers are so 
 unmercifully criticised as those unlucky Frenchmen and 
 Frenchwomen who are suspected of having been brought 
 up anywhere except in the very centre of the city of 
 Paris. 
 
 It will be seen that I think that any girl, and especially 
 any poor girl, should have some better object than to 
 become accomplished, if she undertakes the study of 
 French. The same may be said of other languages, 
 only most others are pursued more earnestly. Perhaps 
 
6S CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 the fact that French is the court language of Europe has 
 attracted to it just those people to whom the surface is 
 everything. 
 
 There are those who recommend the study of the 
 modern languages for their practical use. Circum- 
 stances decide this matter. A girl who is employed by 
 a large merchant or manufacturer having dealings in 
 South America, may find it greatly to the purpose to 
 learn Spanish. Having learned it for its bread-winning 
 value, she may be able to use it to still better ends, — 
 for a knowledge of its literature, perhaps, or to help her 
 to comprehend the life of nations so different from her 
 own. 
 
 I know a young lady who came to the city to study 
 something, — she had not a very distinct idea what. 
 She did not expect to earn her living, but she thought 
 it would be well to study something which might be a 
 prop in time of need. She began with shorthand ; but 
 finding it extremely irksome, she reflected on the re- 
 moteness of the contingency which woulil lead her to 
 use it, and determined to try some language. She 
 found herself inclined toward Volapiik. It seemed to 
 her that it would be a great thing to understand a uni- 
 versal language. She did not realize that Volapiik was 
 an artificial language, that could teach her no more of 
 the structure of language in general than shorthand 
 could, that it had absolutely no literature, and that it 
 
THE STUDY OF LANGUAGES. 69 
 
 could do nothing to help her understand other modes 
 of life. The time may come when Volapiik will be a 
 convenient acquisition for a business woman, but it 
 can never be a means of culture to anybody ; while the 
 study of any natural language must expand the mind, 
 even if pursued for the money it will bring. 
 
 In these days we all go abroad, or expect to go. Of 
 course it is a convenience to understand the language 
 of the countries we visit ; but this is by no means 
 essential. One of the most highly cultivated ladies I 
 ever knew, having been obliged by weakness of the eyes 
 to omit some branches from a life-long course of study, 
 had decided she could best spare the languages, and 
 beyond the rudiments of Latin, learned when a child, 
 she had only English at her command. When the time 
 came for her to go abroad, she had some misgivings ; but 
 a year or two later she could exult in having been all 
 over Europe and having found English sufficient for her 
 needs, while she had often succeeded in extricating her 
 party from difficulties which had baffled the linguists in 
 it. There are English-speaking railway- officials, and 
 clerks, and servants everywhere. So it seems that it 
 is hardly best to learn a language simply for its prac- 
 tical benefit unless we have some definite plan for its 
 immediate use. 
 
 There are, however, other reasons for studying lan- 
 guages which are weighty. It is worth much to have the 
 
70 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 key to any great literature. It is true we shall never 
 exhaust English literature, and it may appear superfluous 
 to study that of another country. But if we could 
 choose the masterpieces of all nations, it would be better 
 than to spend our time exclusively upon the works of one 
 nation. Translations will help us, but a translation can- 
 not completely take the place of the original. Now most 
 of us have the capacity and the opportunity to study at 
 least one language besides our own thoroughly enough to 
 be at home in its literature, though we must not expect 
 to reach that degree of excellence without hard work. 
 If literature is our aim, Greek will repay our labour better 
 than Latin, and German better than any other modern 
 language. But any of the languages usually pursued in 
 schools have a noble literature to offer if we are ready 
 to take it. I have great sympathy with those scholars 
 who learn Italian simply for the sake of entering more 
 fully into the spirit of Dante. 
 
 There is another point of view from which the study 
 of languages, and particularly of the classics, is still more 
 important. True culture ought to raise us above the 
 circumstances of our own narrow lives. If we always 
 look at things from our own standpoint, we are sure to 
 confuse the essential and the accidental ; consequently it 
 is of the greatest value to us to bring ourselves into a 
 position far removed from our own, to see the world if 
 we can with the eyes of one of a different race and 
 
THE STUDY OF LANGUAGES. 7 1 
 
 time ; and while all history and literature will help us to 
 do this, a foreign language, and especially a dead lan- 
 guage, helps us more than anything else, — for the very 
 words (the names of utensils or of the parts of the 
 dress) stand for something unfamiliar in our daily lives, 
 and a translation, however useful, lessens the effect by 
 bringing everything a little nearer our own standards. 
 Dr. W. T. Harris, our U. S. Commissioner of Education, 
 in a powerful paper on the " Function of the study of 
 Latin and Greek in Education " says, " It will be acknowl- 
 edged without dispute that modem civilization is deriva- 
 tive, resting upon the ancient Roman civilization on the 
 one hand, and on Greek civilization on the other." And 
 he argues that the education of a child should lead him 
 to understand the elements of his own complex being. 
 So he must find " one after the other the threads that 
 compose his civilization, — threads that weave the tissue 
 of his own nature as a product of civilization." 
 
 This paper has been given to the Bureau of Educa- 
 tion for distribution, and deserves to be read by every 
 student. 
 
 I do not suppose young girls who are just beginning to 
 study any language can appreciate just how it is going to 
 influence them ; but I should be glad if what I have said 
 might lead some of them to work with a more serious 
 aim than to chatter about the weather in some foreign 
 city. For I believe that every girl should learn some 
 
72 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 language besides her own for the sake of the right men- 
 tal balance. No one has a very clear idea of the struc- 
 ture of English who has not made some attempt to 
 understand another language. 
 
 Pronunciation and conversation cannot be learned 
 without a teacher; but something can be done in 
 grammar and translation by persistent work alone. And 
 at some time or other, the poorest of us is sure to find 
 some one who is glad to teach us something. I have 
 heard of a young girl who spends ten or twelve hours a 
 day in the ill-lighted package-room of a raihoad station 
 and who yet had the energy to begin the study of French 
 by herself. The pronunciation puzzled her, and at last 
 she took courage to ask some questions about it of 
 another young girl — a pupil in a fashionable school — 
 who was in the habit of leaving her books, among which 
 the French books were conspicuous, in the package- 
 room. The latter was delighted. "Oh, Mamma,*' 
 she exclaimed, the moment she reached home, " I have 
 found somebody I can help ! Even my French is actually 
 going to do mc some good." And so she went on help- 
 ing the solitary student a little every day. 
 
 I should do my duty very ill in this chapter if I did 
 not say that our own language deserves our study above 
 all others. \VTien I hear that a young lady speaks French 
 or German as well as she does English, I always find 
 myself wondering how well she speaks English. English 
 
THE STUDY OF LANGUAGES. 73 
 
 seems to be within reach of us all, and yet most of us 
 must blush to acknowledge how imperfectly we have 
 mastered it. How can we do better? 
 
 We are taught the rudiments of the language in school, 
 and there are many admirable little books on words and 
 their uses which may be of service ; but we are often 
 contented to pick up our English from the people about 
 us, and we copy their faults as well as their virtues. Here 
 are a few suggestions for those who have already mas- 
 tered the familiar text-books on grammar and rhetoric : 
 
 1. Read the best writers. 
 
 Those who have the best things to say do not always 
 say them in the most polished English ; but a book does 
 not become a classic unless its ideas are clearly and 
 forcibly expressed. You may not consciously pay any 
 attention to the language of the book you are reading, 
 but you catch its tone, just as you do that of a living 
 companion. 
 
 2. In speaking or writing, try to make your meaning 
 clear, and take pains to choose the best word to express 
 an idea. 
 
 These two suggestions seem to me most important ; 
 but for those who have time and inclination, I think 
 a daily exercise in writing English simply for practice 
 is valuable. It may take the form of a diary, — not 
 a sentimental one, I hope, but one recording the most 
 interesting events of every day. We may write a report 
 
74 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 of lectures, or an abstract of the books we are reading. 
 Another useful exercise is to translate a few paragraphs 
 of some other language into idiomatic English, working 
 over every sentence till we are sure we have rendered 
 the exact idea in the very best way. 
 
 I once knew a young girl whose father, a clergyman 
 with a large correspondence, employed her as an aman- 
 uensis. He gave her the substance of the letters she 
 was to write, but she was obliged to use her own words. 
 " When I used to read the letters to him," she said, " he 
 always asked me if I could not express the same thing 
 more briefly. So I have learned to write concisely, but 1 
 have no grace." 
 
 I doubt whether grace can be directly cultivated. Still, 
 if we should try to say ever}'thing pleasantly as well as 
 forcibly, I fancy that however concise we might be we 
 should never be abrupt; moreover, there is a certain 
 grace in simplicity. 
 
VII. 
 
 THE CULTIVATION OF THE LOVE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 WHY is it that girls care so much for accomplish- 
 ments? Partly, I fear, for the sake of making 
 something of a figure in the world ; but partly also, I am 
 sure, because any true accomplishment, like music or art 
 or dancing or horticulture, or even embroidery, adds so 
 much to the beauty of life, and may give so much enjoy- 
 ment not only to ourselves but to our friends, — though 
 unfortunately most accomplishments are not used as un- 
 selfishly as we might wish them to be, which perhaps 
 only means that very few of us really are accomplished ; 
 that is, we are always working up to the point where we 
 can begin to use our acquisitions for the delight of 
 others, who would not be at all delighted if called upon 
 to share our gifts in their present imperfect state. 
 
 Uneducated girls are apt to overrate the effect of 
 accomplishments, not understanding how few people 
 possess any. I have already shown how rare it is to have 
 a good command of French. In Mr. Howells's story, 
 "A Woman's Reason," Helen Harkness is described as 
 
'■J6 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 having received the best education which money could 
 buy, and yet when she tried to think of a means of self- 
 support, she found her knowledge of music and art and 
 the languages altogether too superficial for the purpose. 
 It is true we do not wish for accomplishments for the 
 sake of earning our living ; but unless they go deep enough 
 to make that possible, we may have a right to wonder 
 whether they deserve to be called accomplishments. A 
 real accomphshment involves intellect. 
 
 But suppose we never can sing or draw or dance well, 
 is that any reason for not doing the best we can? Not 
 if we keep our eyes steadily turned in the right direction. 
 If we love beauty, we must wish to do all we can to make 
 our own little corner beautiful. We may not succeed in 
 producing beauty ourselves, but every attempt we make 
 helps us to see beauty, and even to show it to others. A 
 selfish girl will hope that no one will detect her false 
 notes in singing ; an unselfish girl will rejoice that others 
 have a tmer ear than her own. 
 
 I could never feel with Keats that beauty and truth 
 are identical ; yet in the highest sense this must be tnie, 
 and beauty is one of the great essentials of life. No one 
 can be making the " most of the stuff" who docs not 
 love beauty more and more as time goes on. And so I 
 should like every girl to try to become accomplished ; 
 only let her be sure that she docs it for love of beauty 
 and not for love of herself. 
 
CULTIVATION OF THE LOVE OF BEAUTY. 77 
 
 I cannot tell a girl how to become a musician or an 
 artist. If she has such an aim she must have special 
 teachers ; and even then she will not succeed unless Nature 
 has given her some power. But so far as culture and 
 character go, the love of beauty is more important 
 than the ability to create it. How can we nourish this 
 love? 
 
 Most of us are blind to some forms of beauty. Per- 
 haps we are carried out of ourselves by fine music, but 
 hardly know the difference between a fine picture and a 
 daub. A sunset moves us, but the greatest poetry tires 
 us. How can we help ourselves ? 
 
 Now only those who can themselves draw or paint or 
 work in clay can really criticise a work of art, though 
 one who has keen powers of observation with the neces- 
 sary mental grasp can form some judgment of its merits. 
 I cannot teach anybody to be a critic. Yet shall we not 
 all try to see the little we can see of every kind of 
 beauty? Though I cannot speak with authority, I feel 
 inclined to say something about the study of art, for my 
 experience leads me to think that untaught girls are less 
 awake to the real meaning of paintings and statuary than 
 to most other forms of beauty, — especially in this country, 
 where outside of a few large cities there is no oppor- 
 tunity whatever to see good models. Indeed few Amer- 
 icans know anything of art. Those we call cultivated 
 simply know about it, — the great names, the schools, the 
 
78 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 galleries where the famous pictures are to be found, etc. 
 Even so much is very pleasant, but it has no deep 
 foundation. 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant has brought out this distinction clearly 
 in "Agnes." Agnes was the daughter of a blacksmith, a 
 man of high character, refined feeling, and good intellect. 
 She was like her father, and had all the instincts of a 
 lady. She married a man of station, who appeared to 
 be her superior, but who was so only in externals. He 
 took her to Italy, and she began to know his friends. The 
 pictures entirely bewildered her. She loved all kinds of 
 beauty. Nature or the best poetry touched her far more 
 deeply than it did any one else in that English colony. 
 She was even able to respond to music as she ought, but 
 she could never say the right thing about a picture. Now 
 it was not true that most of her husband's friends really 
 saw more than she did ; they simply knew what they 
 were expected to see and despised her for not knowing. 
 
 Few persons do see what is to be seen, and so long as 
 a foolish vanity makes them wish to appear as if they did 
 see, no progress is possible. Not long ago I had the 
 pleasure of passing an afternoon in the studio of an artist 
 who has just returned to this country after living many 
 years abroad. In speaking of the different atmosphere 
 for work here and in Europe, he said that America was 
 disheartening, because no one seemed to care to find out 
 what an artist was trying to do. " Bostonians," he said. 
 
CULTIVATION OF THE LOVE OF BEAUTY. 79 
 
 "would seldom hazard any praise for fear of praising 
 the wrong thing. New Yorkers," he added with frank 
 simplicity, " are even more ignorant than Bostonians ; but 
 they have a more genial effect on an artist, for they will 
 admire freely, not being so conceited nor so afraid of 
 making a mistake ! " 
 
 An able New York critic said to a friend of mine, 
 " When you look at a picture, do not say, ' I like it,' or 
 ' I don't like it,' at first ; but try to see what there is 
 in it." 
 
 All artists mean to express the beauty they themselves 
 see. It may be very little, and they may not succeed in 
 expressing even that. If they fail in expression, our 
 study will be barren, though it may perhaps teach us 
 something of the value of technique. But if they have 
 expressed even a little beauty, it will often be just that 
 which we should not have seen without their help, for 
 every artist must emphasize that part of the beauty of 
 the universe which comes within his own range of vision, 
 and the universe is so vast that no one sees it all. One 
 artist has an eye for colour, one for form, another for life 
 and action, another still sees through the dull and faded 
 features of common faces to the soul beyond, and their 
 pictures silently help us to see the same things as if a 
 friend stood at our side and pointed them out. 
 
 If we try to see what there is in a picture, I do not 
 think our time is quite wasted, even if we study poor 
 
80 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 ones. If there is nothing there — or nothing for us — we 
 shall soon find it out. Still, we want the best from the 
 very beginning to supply us with standards of excellence. 
 Let us at least study what we believe to be the best 
 within our reach. In Boston, for instance, we know that 
 the Art Museum is full of objects worth seeing. The 
 pictures are not as good as the statuary ; and if we have 
 no friend to guide us, perhaps the best thing we can do 
 is to begin with the sculptures of the Parthenon, which 
 we know to belong to the most perfect period of Greek 
 art. 
 
 But suppose we want to look at pictures. I think it 
 would be a good plan to spend an hour some day in a 
 single room, looking at each painting and trying to find 
 out its value. Then, having made our first crude obser- 
 vations, let us ask the one among our friends who knows 
 most of art what he thinks on these points. Or, if we 
 have seen something by a famous artist, we may read 
 about him, and even if we do not meet with any expHcit 
 criticism of the painting we have been examining, we are 
 sure to find some estimate of the qualities belonging to 
 his work in general. Now we can return to the pictures 
 themselves, and see whether we arc incHned to hold to 
 our first judgment. 
 
 It is not best to look at many works of art at once. 
 We do not fairly see them. But the dullest of us can 
 usually find something of worth if we will take time. 
 
CULTIVATION OF THE LOVE OF BEAUTY. 8 1 
 
 For example, among the reproductions of certain reliefs 
 from the tomb of Ti, in the first Egyptian room of the 
 Boston Art Museum, is one in which the careless girl 
 would notice simply a few cattle with their drivers, and 
 she would probably then pass on to the next. I cannot 
 say what the hieroglyphics of the panel may mean. It 
 may be that they tell the whole story. But you can dis- 
 cover it for yourself. If you will stand before the sculp- 
 ture for a few minutes, you will notice that one of the 
 men is carrying a calf on his shoulders, — a pitiful, anx- 
 ious calf, which is turning its head backward. Next in 
 order follow three cows, and you can instantly pick out 
 the mother of the calf by the distress in her attitude. 
 Now, you may not call this work of some long- dead 
 Egyptian beautiful, but it is touching ; and even a young 
 girl who knows nothing of Egyptian history would feel a 
 thrill of kinship with that ancient people when she had 
 found out the meaning of this representation for herself. 
 Those of us who have no natural taste for art are in great 
 danger of depending on the title of a picture for its 
 meaning and not on the picture itself. This is what art- 
 ists condemn as judging a picture from a literary point 
 of view. I suppose, for that matter, that all of us who 
 have not been taught correct drawing and colouring must 
 inevitably judge pictures largely from a literary point of 
 view ; but if we only find some real beauty in them, that 
 is better than nothing. v^ l^ a t 
 
 6 ^^\h 
 
82 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 In New York the Metropolitan Museum is open to 
 everybody. In Washington, in St. Louis, and in many 
 other large cities there are collections accessible to the 
 public containing at least some works of undoubted ex- 
 cellence which a beginner might study with a certainty 
 of being repaid. There are thousands of country girls 
 all over the United States who are in the habit of going 
 into these cities several times a year at least to do shop- 
 ping, and if they chose to give even an hour of their 
 busy day to the best art to be had in the city, — not 
 merely a hasty glance to the latest exhibition in an art- 
 dealer's rooms, — they would find that their power of 
 appreciating the best slowly increased from year to year. 
 Of course the girls who live in these cities hive a hun- 
 dred times better opportunity. Do they use it ? 
 
 A few years ago there was a genuine Raphael in the 
 Metropolitan Museum, — the Madonna of the Candela- 
 brum. How many New York girls of leisure took the 
 pains to study it? 
 
 But though thousands of girls might look at these fine 
 collections if they would, there are a million at least in 
 the United States who have no access to anything of the 
 kind. What can such girls do? Not much, but some- 
 thing. It is now easy to get really good unmounted 
 photographs of most of the great pictures of the world. 
 Those who cannot find them nearer can always send to 
 the Soule Photograph Co., 338 Washington Street, Bos- 
 
CULTIVATION OF THE LOVE OF BEAUTY. 83 
 
 ton. If a club could be formed in any town or even in 
 two or three adjoining towns, so that by the payment of 
 a small fee twenty or thirty dollars' worth of photographs 
 could be bought every year, and the members would 
 study these, it would not be long before they would know 
 more about pictures than most people who are called 
 cultivated, and if they faithfully looked for the best in 
 every picture they would gradually learn to find it. 
 
 Those who cannot afford to buy even photographs may 
 be able to borrow such as illustrate particular artists and 
 schools from the Art Department of the "Study At 
 Home Society," 41 Marlborough Street, Boston. 
 
 Then suppose we look also for the material for pictures. 
 In the most obscure circle there is always some wrinkled 
 woman with a sweet mouth, or some toil-worn man with 
 clear eyes, who may give to us the same elevation of 
 thought that we get most easily from a work of art. 
 
 I heard a cultivated lady say once, " I never cared 
 much for Nature till after I had studied paintings." This 
 is a curious reversal of the true order of things. You 
 see, however, it is true that the artists who work sincerely 
 do show us what most of us are slow to find without 
 them ; yet if we have the determination, we can find the 
 beauty for ourselves, and that is better than to know all 
 the galleries of Europe by heart. 
 
 In the study of painting or sculpture or architecture 
 books will sometimes help us, — not of course to produce. 
 
84 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 but to appreciate. I once heard a distinguished librarian 
 say in answer to some one who had asked for a list of 
 such books, " Begin with Kugler." The half-dozen small 
 illustrated volumes of Kugler's '' Hand-book of Painting " 
 would probably take a girl further than most works which 
 are equally accessible on the way to just views about 
 pictures. 
 
 For those girls who expect to study the pictures of 
 Italy at first hand there is probably no guide to compare 
 with Burckhardt's " Cicerone." Passavant's illustrated 
 ** Life of Raphael " is of great service to those who stay 
 at home ; and there are other illustrated lives of the 
 artists, — particularly Black's " Michael Angelo," Crowe 
 and Cavalcaselle's *' Titian," the " Leonardo da Vinci " 
 and " Albert DUrer " of Mrs. Heaton, and her translation 
 of Meyer's " Correggio," — which are of value. 
 
 If you wish to know something of sculpture, no single 
 work will give you a clearer and more trustworthy outline 
 of the subject than Mrs. Lucy M. Mitchell's " History of 
 Ancient Sculpture." It has the merit of being more 
 entertaining than many standard works, and better than 
 all, the illustrations are unusually fine, even the wood- 
 engravings being artistic. A supplementary portfolio of 
 twenty phototype plates, entitled " Selections from An- 
 cient Sculpture," may be used for further illustration by 
 those of you who can afford such a work. Mrs. Mitchell 
 has a special power in describing a work of art in few 
 
CULTIVATION OF THE LOVE OF BEAUTY. 85 
 
 words which help a beginner to see where its real value 
 lies, so that her descriptions taken in connection with 
 her illustrations are a true education for the reader. 
 
 But in this chapter I am less concerned to show how 
 we may learn about works of art than how we may 
 actually see what they mean. We want to enter into the 
 life of others far away, and under all disguises. We look, 
 for instance, at such casts as those of Lincoln Cathedral 
 in the Art Museum in Boston, and we hastily say they are 
 grotesque and not beautiful. Yet if we look a little 
 longer at some of those queer angels perched up in pain- 
 ful positions, while they twang their antiquated musical 
 instruments, we begin to see in their blissful smiles a hint 
 of the aspiring souls within. 
 
 But while we try to see the beauty we are sure there 
 must be in any masterpiece which has stood the test of 
 centuries, let us never pretend to find what we do not 
 find. Let us not be ashamed of our ignorance, and let 
 us express our judgments with entire simplicity and 
 modesty. 
 
 I think sometimes that those who are totally unin- 
 structed have a better chance than those who have had 
 generations of culture, because they have no false theories 
 to mislead them. Our Puritan ancestors sternly set 
 beauty aside, and a great many of us were accordingly 
 born without an eye for colour or an ear for harmony. 
 That is a great loss ; but if we inherit the sincerity of 
 
S6 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 our forefathers, it may help us more to catch the divine 
 meaning in any form of art than a quick eye or a sensitive 
 ear. 
 
 How shall those of us not specially endowed learn to 
 love the most beautiful music ? By hearing it, of course. 
 It is on this principle that all the private schools in 
 Boston close early on Fridays so that the young scholars 
 may spend their afternoon at the Symphony Rehearsal. 
 
 I heard a young lady say not long ago, " I have had to 
 go to the Symphony Concerts ever since they were 
 founded. I used to think they were tedious, and beg to 
 stay at home ; but my father said that if I could not 
 appreciate such music, I must learn to appreciate it, and 
 now it seems the most beautiful thing in the world." I 
 do not think such heroic measures would succeed in all 
 cases ; and at all events it is not possible for every girl in 
 the land to go to a Symphony Concert every Friday 
 afternoon. Even in Boston, as the speculators buy most 
 of the seats, such an education is out of the reach of 
 most poor girls. Very well. Then hear the best music 
 which is within reach. If you cannot hear Beethoven, 
 some one in your own village may be able to sing hymns 
 sweetly. Ask this friend to sing to you often. If you 
 practise music yourself, do not think a false note is of no 
 consequence ; and do not beg your teacher to give you 
 something showy when you might learn something noble. 
 
CULTIVATION OF THE LOVE OF BEAUTY. 8/ 
 
 Few of my readers will be so far away from music that 
 sometime they might not hear a thoroughly good con- 
 cert if they would go without a ribbon or two for the 
 sake of it. Only the musical will get the full meaning of 
 music ; but all of us have a deep need of all we can get, 
 and something is within the reach of every one who 
 longs for it. 
 
 Some years ago, when in England, an attractive Amer- 
 ican girl said to me, with a mortified air, " I will never 
 own it to the English, but it is true that we Americans 
 have dreadful voices, just as they say we have. Only 
 hear my sister's tone across this room ! " 
 
 Now we must admit that few of us have really sweet 
 voices ; and yet if we love beauty, and especially beauti- 
 ful music, we must wish to do what we can to make our 
 voices musical. I have sometimes thought this was 
 impossible unless we could have an exceptionally fine 
 vocal teacher, and that is beyond the reach of most of 
 us ; but I have lately seen some very practical sugges- 
 tions on this subject in a little book on " Our Mother 
 Tongue " by Mr. Theodore Mead, which I am pretty sure 
 would help any girl who would faithfully follow them. 
 
 Whether sweet voices are possible to us or not, it is 
 in our power to cuhivate gentle and pure speech. I 
 doubt whether there is any more genuine accomplish- 
 ment than this, or one which on the whole gives more 
 refined pleasure to those about us, though it is not showy. 
 
88 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 Clear enunciation and perfect but easy pronunciation 
 are marks of a lady hardly to be mistaken. To reach 
 this standard care and thought and practice are neces- 
 sary. And there are many books to help us. Among 
 the dictionaries we shall probably find " Worcester " most 
 useful. " Our Mother Tongue," which I have already 
 mentioned, contains in small compass more available 
 information than any other book I am acquainted with. 
 And as several girls in earnest can learn more than 
 one can learn alone, I should like to suggest that some 
 of you who are aware that your manner of speaking is 
 not all you desire it to be should form a little club for 
 improving not only your voices, but your pronunciation, 
 and that you should begin by practising together from 
 Mr. Mead's vocabulary. 
 
 When you become mistress of this accomplishment, 
 you will be able to add something to the pleasure of many 
 a friend who laughs at your paintings and votes your 
 music a bore. 
 
 The love of flowers is a natural endowment of almost 
 every girl. Their beauty is so simple and so common that 
 no one need be shut out from it. If a woman studies 
 botany, she learns to find a thousand delicate wild blos- 
 soms which she would not otherwise have seen. If she 
 must stay at home, as so many women must, she can 
 often have her own little garden, or at least a stand of 
 
CULTIVATION OF THE LOVE OF BEAUTY. 89 
 
 pLints in her window, and by cultivating them actually 
 bear her part in the creation of beauty. Few are too 
 poor or too busy to miss altogether the gentle ministra- 
 tions of flowers ; but some women fail to catch the true 
 spirit of them after all. I know a fine woman who is a 
 botanist. She can give the scientific name of every 
 flower in the county. She has an immense herbarium, 
 and will — 
 
 "prose 
 O'er books of travelled seamen. 
 And show you slips of all that grows 
 From England to Van Diemen." 
 
 She is to me a very interesting woman ; her knowledge 
 is accurate and thorough, and her study has scientific 
 value as well as being an innocent and healthful recrea- 
 tion. But I have never once heard her say of a flower, 
 " How beautiful it is ! " A friend of hers who knows 
 nothing of botany cultivates a bright, sweet garden. 
 The botanist is inclined to look down on the horticultur- 
 ist and think she knows nothing of flowers. But is it 
 not better to see their beauty than to know their names? 
 Yet I have known a woman who successfully cultivated 
 the most exquisite plants who said, " I would not have 
 flowers at all if I could not have finer ones than any one 
 else in the village." She did have finer ones than any 
 one else in the village ; but it is certain that she did not 
 love their beauty, for then she must have wished every 
 garden in the place to be fragrant with it. 
 
90 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 The love of flowers is a part of the great love of 
 Nature. Nature is freely given to all of us. 
 
 "June may be had by the poorest comer." 
 
 I do not believe there is any girl who will read these 
 pages who has not felt the thrill of the spring woods or 
 the autumn sunsets or the starry sky; but there are a 
 great many girls who take very little time to look at these 
 things. They sit over their crochet work when the twi- 
 light sky is flushed with rose and violet and the great 
 planets are shedding their golden light through the veil 
 of colour, and think it is provoking that it is growing dark. 
 On the rocks by the seashore they read a flimsy novel. I 
 am afraid most of us must remember beautiful scenes 
 which we have made commonplace — and worse — by 
 gossiping conversation. The trouble with us is not that 
 we cannot feel beauty, nor that it is not lying all about 
 us, but that we are not willing to choose it before the 
 trivialities which interpose to hide it from us. I do not 
 mean, of course, that we are not to laugh or talk in the 
 
 open air; 
 
 " Is this a time to be gloomy and sad 
 When our Mother Nature laughs around ? " 
 
 I do mean, that we ought to take the time to see the 
 glory of the world, that we ought to rejoice that it is 
 our duty to take the time to see it, and that we ought not 
 to let our meaner selves obstruct our vision. Those of us 
 who have time should take a walk every day, — not sim- 
 
CULTIVATION OF THE LOVE OF BEAUTY. 9 1 
 
 ply for the sake of our health, but expressly to see the 
 wonderful sky and the wonderful earth. And who has 
 not time ? There are unhappy women crowded in city 
 garrets, who must work for their lives, who can hardly 
 lift their eyes to see the sunset shining in at their attic 
 windows ; but those of us who can read a book need not 
 plead that we have no time to see beauty. 
 
 There is only one kind of reading which can illuminate 
 our lives as Nature can, and that is poetry. I have spoken 
 of that again and again. It seems to me so essential to 
 any true development that I must speak of it in many 
 different chapters. It is not enough to read poetry ; we 
 must learn it. If we are too dull to know what is beau- 
 tiful ourselves, let us learn some great poem which others 
 have told us is beautiful, and in learning it we shall think 
 of it so much that we shall see the beauty. An easy 
 rhyme has a danger, — we may catch the rhythm more 
 quickly than the meaning. Some of the finest poetry is 
 in the form of sonnets ; and these are so difficult to mem- 
 orize that we are sure to gain their secret in the effort. 
 
 To show you what I mean, I am going to copy here a 
 familiar sonnet of Wordsworth which I do not think too 
 difficult for most young girls, and ask if each of you who 
 does not already know it will not learn it by heart. 
 
 " It is a beauteous evening, calm and free ; 
 The holy time is quiet as a nun 
 Breathless with adoration ; the broad sun 
 Is sinking down in its tranquillity ; 
 
92 CHATS WITH GIRLS OX SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 The gentleness of heaven is on the sea. 
 
 Listen ! the mighty Being is awake, 
 
 And doth with his eternal motion make 
 
 A sound like thunder everlastingly. 
 
 Dear child ! dear girl ! that walkest with me here, 
 
 If thou appear'st untouched by solemn thought, 
 
 Thy nature is not therefore less divine. 
 
 Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year; 
 
 And worshipp'st at the temple's inner shrine, 
 
 God being with thee when we know it not." 
 
 If you will learn tliis, I think you will feel as if you 
 had a treasure of new beauty in your heart. I think 
 you will be ready to give up some trivial occupation for 
 a few minutes every day to learn poetry of this quality. 
 
 It is sometimes hard to find time for even noble work 
 without neglecting still more imperative duties. But one 
 reason we who are older now find it so hard to get time 
 for what is so well worth doing is that when we were 
 girls and might have chosen the best, we did not put the 
 right emphasis on our various employments, and our 
 lives became tangled almost past help. Perhaps some 
 girl who sees a life of leisure before her may stop here 
 and resolve to give a little time every day to poetry. If 
 she does this, I should not be surprised to find that ten 
 years later, in the stress of family cares or of business 
 or of deeds of mercy, she should still find time for the 
 daily cnmib of beauty which will be essential to her life. 
 
 I know of a young girl growing up on a Western ranch, 
 far away from people and from schools. Her life is a 
 
CULTIVATION OF THE LOVE OF BEAUTY. 93 
 
 busy one, fall of the petty strains which come from cease- 
 less household drudgery. Her mother — a highly culti- 
 vated lady — has very little time to teach her children, 
 the immediate needs of every day being so urgent. Yet 
 she finds room for the best things. Every evening she 
 and her little daughter sit by a western window and watch 
 the sun set while the mother repeats the finest poetry 
 and the child learns it from her lips. In this way they 
 have committed to memory "Tintern Abbey," and they 
 have learned how Nature can — 
 
 " So impress 
 With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
 With lofty thoughts " 
 
 that not even so dreary and labourious a life as theirs 
 " shall e'er prevail against " them. 
 
 Shakspeare and Milton and Chaucer and Burns are 
 thus constantly in their hearts, and their life is far more 
 poetic than that of most women whose homes are 
 crowded with works of art, and whose daily occupations 
 are in themselves beautiful. 
 
 Miss Lucy Larcom, whose lovely " New England Girl- 
 hood " I hope every girl will read, tells us that when she 
 was working in a Lowell cotton factory at thirteen or 
 fourteen years old, she obtained permission to tend some 
 frames that stood directly in front of the windows look- 
 ing off on the beautiful Merrimac River, and she made 
 
94 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 her window- seat into a small library of poetry, pasting 
 its sides all over with newspaper clippings. These she 
 could look at and even learn by heart without interrupting 
 her work. 
 
 It is not always best to combine work and study ; but 
 most girls who have much manual labour to do will find 
 that some of it is so mechanical that their minds are free, 
 and will be all the better for being filled with poetry. 
 When rocking a cradle or knitting there is a mental 
 breathing-space. I have known girls who pinned up a 
 poem on the wall to learn while washing dishes, and 
 some have even ironed plain clothes in a satisfactory 
 manner with a book open before them on the table. A 
 poem differs from other reading in this. It is not only 
 unnecessary to read more than a line or two at a time, 
 but it is usually better to think over one line a few 
 minutes before going on to the next. 
 
 And now, at last, is it not better to love beauty and 
 seek it for its own sake than to wish to appropriate it to 
 ourselves as an accomplishment? If we have the gifts 
 and the opportunities which make it possible for us to be 
 accomplished, then our genuine love of beauty will make 
 our accomplishments something more than a mere means 
 of exhibiting ourselves, — they will be a blessing to 
 everybody around us. 
 
VIII. 
 
 HOW SHALL WE READ? 
 
 A URORA LEIGH says : — 
 
 '* We get no good 
 By being ungenerous, even to a book, 
 And calculating profits, — so much help 
 By so much reading. It is rather when 
 We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge 
 Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, 
 Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth, — 
 'T is then we get the right good from a book." 
 
 Those of us who feel that reading has been the delight 
 and blessing of our lives are ready to echo this outburst. 
 
 I am a litde afraid, however, that when girls are left 
 entirely to their own sweet will the books they plunge 
 gloriously into are almost all stories. I like stories too 
 well myself to find fault with this, and I think it would 
 be wise for parents and guardians to scatter so many 
 good stories in the pathway of an ardent girl that she 
 would have no time left for trash. Still, as ice-cream 
 would cloy the appetite if we began a meal with it, I 
 believe it might be well for any girl to spend the first 
 part of her leisure every day in reading for study rather 
 
96 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 than merely for recreation, — that is, unless she has already 
 done her full share of study in school. And if she is a 
 bright girl and has any access to really worthy books, she 
 will be sure to find herself plunging gloriously in before 
 she has gone far. 
 
 An old lady tells me that when she was a young girl 
 teaching her first school she was very indignant with one 
 of the committee, who criticised her reading-class on the 
 ground that no child should ever read a single word of 
 which he could not give the definition. "Then they 
 never would read anything," she replied, with spirit. I 
 hope I shall not be thought superficial if I say my sym- 
 pathies are all with her. To be always breaking the 
 thread of one's thought to look up a word in the diction- 
 ary or to trace out a classical allusion seems to me enough 
 to check any ordinary enthusiasm. As for words, by 
 the time we have read the same word a dozen times in 
 different connections we know its meaning flir better than 
 if we had halted painfully at its first appearance and 
 looked for it in the dictionary. 
 
 One of the largest-minded men I ever knew once 
 remarked in my hearing that he had advised his wife's 
 little fifteen -year-old English maid-servant to read 
 Herbert Spencer's " Education." " Do you think she 
 can understand it ? " I asked. " Not all of it," he replied. 
 " That is the reason I gave it to her. She is a clever 
 gid, and ought to make something of herself. It is 
 
HOW SHALL WE READ? 97 
 
 wholesome for her to find there are things beyond her 
 comprehension." 
 
 I would not discourage any girl from looking up all 
 the new words and all the classical allusions which 
 she feels an earnest wish to understand; but I believe 
 the best way to read is to take a paragraph, a chap- 
 ter, and sometimes even a book as a whole first, and 
 then return to it again and again till we have made it 
 thoroughly our own. I suppose we look up definitions 
 that we may better understand the author's meaning, 
 so we do not vvish to lose the drift of his argument in 
 the attempt. 
 
 I once knew a conscientious young lady who under- 
 took some difficult scientific reading. An elder friend 
 had pursued the same course a year or two previously, 
 and the two seldom met even in the street that the 
 younger did not inquire into the meaning of some knotty 
 paragraph which was barring her way. " Read on, and 
 then come back to it," was always the laughing reply. 
 At last, one day the younger said, " I verily believe you 
 are right. When I can't understand a sentence, the next 
 sentence usually explains it." 
 
 Who ever did understand anything beyond the primer 
 at first reading ? It is superficial to think you do ; but 
 if you have not the courage and perseverance to reread 
 the first chapters of any book that is worth while in the 
 light of the last chapters, then perhaps you are super- 
 
 7 
 
98 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 ficial. In books and a few other things, the whole is 
 greater than the sum of all its parts. 
 
 It is generally a good plan in studying a lesson to read 
 it all first before beginning to learn it. The Harvard 
 examination papers give the direction, " Read over a 
 passage several times before attempting to write your 
 translation." This saves time in the end. 
 
 Even a novel that treats life and character with any 
 wisdom deserves rereading. If you lay it aside ten 
 years and then come back to it, you find far more in it 
 than at first, for your own experience and growth have 
 opened your eyes ; but even if you reread it at once, 
 the development of character at the close teaches some- 
 thing new of the meaning of the first scenes. 
 
 All this is still truer of solid books. I have heard 
 thoughtful people say, for instance, that Emerson has no 
 dialectic. (Do not look up the meaning of " dialectic " 
 just yet.) They say that every sentence is a gem, full of 
 beauty and truth and power ; that one of his essays is a 
 collection of such jewels ; but that there is no dominating 
 thought in each to which every sentence contributes. 
 This is not true ; but it is not at the first reading that we 
 find out it is not true. There is dialectic in every essay ; 
 but the closely packed jewels are so brilliant that each 
 one absorbs our whole attention for the time, and we are 
 too exhausted at the end of the chapter to recall so 
 many thoughts and understand their bearing on each 
 
HOW SHALL WE READ? 99 
 
 Other. But we take up the same essay the next day and 
 the next, and at last we see the whole design. Even a 
 young girl would find it well worth her while to do this 
 with an essay or two, though I know I must not expect 
 many girls to care deeply for Emerson till they are far 
 beyond their teens, and I shall have no quarrel with them 
 because their Scott and Dickens are so much dearer to 
 them, for I love Scott and Dickens myself. And yet 
 some of you find even Scott dull ! 
 
 Here let me say that it is never best to give up altogether 
 reading an author we know to be great even if we can- 
 not understand him. Keep on reading a little at a time, 
 at short intervals, and the light is sure to dawn gradually. 
 Especially if a book contains an argument, we must try 
 to look at it as a whole, before we can fully master 
 details ; but we need not do it all at once. Never work 
 over any subject after your brain begins to be tired. 
 Turn to something else till to-morrow, and then the 
 crooked places will be made straight. 
 
 A great work usually has some message for all of us. I 
 know a child of five years who already begins to love 
 Shakspeare. Her mother has taken pains to read to her 
 some of the fairy parts of the " Midsummer Night's 
 Dream," arranging them in a connected story. When 
 the child seems restless, the mother skips the long pas- 
 sages, and confines her reading simply to the story, but 
 now she puts in a speech of Titania and again one of 
 
lOO CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 Oberon, and explains as much of it as the child seems to 
 enjoy. The mother does not read the " Midsummer 
 Night's Dream " every day or every week to the child ; 
 but after a little inter\^al, she asks, " Shall we have Titania 
 again?" and the child thinks it is a treat. Moreover, 
 the little one already goes about the house singing or 
 reciting, " I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows," 
 or "How now, spirit, whither wander you?" Suppose 
 the mother had waited till the child could understand 
 every word of the play before beginning to read it, do 
 you think the child would ever have found the same 
 charm in Puck and Bottom and Peasblossom and Mustard 
 Seed? 
 
 I know a young girl who has an absorbing musical 
 genius. She also has a rare power of appreciating fine 
 poetry ; but oddly enough, the other members of her fam- 
 ily care only for music, so that she has been left to grow 
 up without any training in literature ; and not having 
 formed the habit of reading she now reads very little and 
 very slowly, her time and thoughts being given almost 
 exclusively to her musical education. Yet I know no 
 other girl who reads so satisfactorily. When she was 
 about eighteen, she discovered that Shakspeare was meant 
 for her. This is the way she makes acquaintance with a 
 play. First she reads it through just as she has time and 
 inclination, thinking over any passage that interests or 
 puzzles her, and marking the lines that are so grand or 
 
HOW SHALL WE READ? lOI 
 
 beautiful that she feels as if she must learn them. Then 
 she looks up the history which may happen to be con- 
 nected with the play. Occasionally she reads a criticism. 
 Next she learns the lines she has marked. Afterwards 
 she reads the whole play again. If she has a chance to 
 see it on the stage, she reads it once more before going 
 to the theatre, and still again after she has seen it. It 
 usually takes her six or eight weeks to read a play, and 
 she enjoys every moment of her reading. ** If I am 
 blue," she says, "I take up my Shakspeare, and forget 
 my troubles." 
 
 I know another girl, who has lived among literary peo- 
 ple all her life, who will read a sublime passage of 
 Shakspeare aloud smoothly, and almost with feeling ; and 
 yet if you ask her at the end of it to tell you its sub- 
 stance, her ideas abont it prove to be hazy. Rapid 
 readers are in danger of falling into this careless habit. 
 If you are conscious of having such a habit, stop at the 
 end of every paragraph and see if you know exactly 
 what you have been reading about. Indeed you are one of 
 the girls who probably need to look up every definition as 
 they go along, for every check to the mere flow of words 
 will help you to think, true as it is that whenever atten- 
 tion to mere words checks the flow of thought there is 
 some danger of losing the best of the reading. Under 
 some circumstances it is really worth while to look up 
 your classical and Scriptural allusions, though I have 
 
'»02 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 always firmly believed that the way to understand them 
 was to read the classics and the Scriptures instead of 
 using Lempriere's Dictionary or Cniden's Concordance. 
 Of course we all wish to be accurate ; and though we 
 must not sacrifice the whole of a subject to its de- 
 tails, we must go in search of a great many irksome 
 particulars. 
 
 It is often thought that accurate knowledge depends 
 on one's intellectual and moral firmness, and certainly 
 it does have to do with character. Nevertheless it is 
 frequently a matter of access to books. We do not all 
 have the " Encyclopaedia Britannica " at our elbow, even 
 when we are quite willing to take the trouble to look 
 up a doubtful question. We do all need a well-equipped 
 private library if our reading is to go very deep. Pub- 
 lic libraries are a great blessing, but I am afraid they 
 tempt us to spend some of the money in bonbons which 
 we ought rightfully to spend in books. Free school 
 text-books have the same tendency. They were intro- 
 duced in Massachusetts with the best intentions, but I 
 have always felt that they defrauded all but the very 
 IX)or of their right to own their school-books. A young 
 lady forgets a date in histor)-. She knows exactly where 
 to find it in the text-book she used in school, and if 
 she owns the book she refers to it and remembers the 
 date ever after. But if she must spend an hour in a 
 public library looking up the matter, the chances are 
 
HOW SHALL WE READ? 103 
 
 she never does it, and is always at a loss. Of course 
 we are still free to buy our text- books, but when our 
 purse is light the temptation is strong to make use of 
 those provided. 
 
 Most of us cannot buy many books, but it is worth 
 while to buy as many as we can. We all want an un- 
 abridged dictionary and an encyclopaedia and a few 
 books of reference ; still, if we must choose, do we not 
 need Shakspeare even more than a dictionary, and do 
 not most of us get more help in noble living from the 
 pages of George Eliot than from an encyclopaedia? 
 
 Whenever you buy a book, buy one that means some- 
 thing to you, even if it is a novel or a child's story. 
 
 For what is the object of reading? 
 
 Is it not that we may enter into the best thoughts of 
 the men and women of all time and be helped by them 
 to our own best and fullest life? Now all writers do 
 not help all readers. Of course a book must be genu- 
 ine to help anybody ; but the child or the undeveloped 
 man or woman may sometimes be best reached by 
 simple books which are too elementary to be even 
 glanced at by those who have reached a higher stage of 
 culture. I myself was brought up on the Rollo books 
 and Miss Edgeworth's stories, and retain a fondness 
 for them to this day. But I had a schoolmate — a 
 girl of genius — who laughed to scorn the idea that any 
 child could be interested in such every-day philoso- 
 
104 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 phy as these works contain. She said that she would 
 rather by half have read Jonathan Edwards '* On the 
 Affections " when she was a child, and I remember feel- 
 ing quite ashamed of my commonplace tastes. Now, 
 however, I am very glad that since I was not a genius, 
 my parents provided Abbot and Miss Edgeworth for 
 me instead of Edwards. 
 
 Though none of us can afford to be careless in any 
 of our reading, it has always seemed to me right that 
 there should be a great difference between reading for 
 study and for recreation. Some teachers say that if a 
 girl wishes to read a novel when she is studying the 
 reign of Elizabeth, it will be as much recreation for her 
 to read " Kcnil worth " as any other novel. But that 
 depends upon whether she chooses the book herself. 
 Recreation impHcs freedom. It is a good thing to read 
 " Kenilworth " when studying the reign of Elizabeth. 
 Most of us get our first vivid ideas of English history 
 from Scott and Shakspeare. But if a tired girl thought 
 a novel would rest her, and saw both ** Kenilworth " 
 and "John Halifax" lying on the table, and knew that 
 of the two she must take " Kenilworth," even if she 
 liked it as well as "John Halifax" she would have a 
 feeling of restraint sure to tell on her nen'es at last ; 
 and she would not only get no relaxation from her 
 reading, but it is doubtful whether she would learn as 
 much by dwelling on one subject all the time. By 
 
HOW SHALL WE READ? 105 
 
 looking long at a colour the eye becomes fatigued, and 
 it is refreshing to see another. I once visited an asylum 
 for the feeble-minded where the children were taught 
 to read by means of words printed in large letters on 
 strips of pasteboard. A teacher who was trying to in- 
 struct a beginner held in her hand two strips, one with 
 the word " eye " upon it, and the other with the word 
 " blackboard." " Why do you use such different words ? " 
 I asked. *•' Because it is so much easier for a child to 
 distinguish words which do not look alike," she replied. 
 Even if from the educational point of view it were 
 best to pursue one subject to the bitter end, there would 
 be no recreation in such reading. Play ought to be 
 play, and should not be haunted by a sense of duty. But 
 as rough or cruel play can never be allowed, so silly 
 and bad books cannot be tolerated. Wise parents put 
 so many good books in the way of their children that 
 the taste for them is formed unconsciously, and there 
 is never any feeling of restraint. But some girls must 
 form their own taste, and if they are in earnest, it will 
 not take them very long to banish all wish for worth- 
 less literature, though perhaps for a few months recrea- 
 tion will not be entirely recreation. 
 
IX. 
 
 WHAT SHALL WE READ? 
 
 T WONDER if any girls may wish that I would give 
 them a few suggestions as to the books they should 
 read. I cannot lay down a course of reading because 
 that should vary with the needs of each girl. Still, in 
 almost every chapter of this volume I have had occasion 
 to refer to some book or other which might give help in 
 some direction ; and by the time you have read these 
 books, you will perhaps be able to judge for yourself 
 what you most require. What I have to say here is 
 more general. 
 
 First, let us talk a little about novels. It is not alto- 
 gether because girls are superficial that they crave so 
 much of such food ; but partly because they rightly have 
 a greater interest in life than in knowledge, and partly 
 because a story makes so many obscure things clear. 
 Some people must have everything in the form of a story 
 if they are to understand it at all. 
 
 Yet many of the greatest novels are ill-adapted to 
 girls. In the first place, girls ought to know the good in 
 
WHAT SHALL WE READ? lO/ 
 
 the world before they learn much of its evil, and in 
 the second place they cannot really appreciate a novel 
 which deals with the passions and temptations of older 
 people till they have had some experience themselves. 
 Any great novel requires and deserves study. Those 
 who read it in girlhood must read it later in life also. 
 Unless they do this, it is a greater loss in the develop- 
 ment of mind and character to read a great novel pre- 
 maturely than to try to master a work on science or 
 language for which they are unprepared. 
 
 Then, moreover, the coarseness girls are so carefully 
 guarded from in books and in society does not really 
 hurt them as much as worldliness. Girlhood is not the 
 time for any novelist who does not believe that some- 
 thing besides the actual is possible and necessary. What- 
 ever Dickens's faults may be, he can be trusted here, 
 and I never knew a girl who loved Dickens who was not 
 large-hearted. If a girl appreciates Thackeray, "The 
 Newcomes " is a better book for her to read than " Vanity 
 Fair." Scott is one of the masters always to be trusted 
 to present a natural world which is nevertheless rosy 
 with the light of romance. 
 
 There are half a dozen fresh, sweet story-writers girls 
 are always the better for reading, — Mrs. Mulock-Craik, 
 Mrs. Whitney, Miss Thackeray, Miss Yonge, Miss Alcott, 
 Black. Many a girl in a rough and poor home learns 
 how to be a gentlewoman from constant association with 
 
I08 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 their gentle heroines. Girls in every grade of society 
 except the highest get as many of their ideas of manners 
 from novels as from people. Every girl may have noble 
 society in books. Faith Gartney, and Leslie Goldthwaite, 
 and the March girls in ** Little Women," and " D dear " 
 in "Off the Skelligs," and all Miss Mulock's dear girls, 
 and Florence Dombey, and the Agnes of " David Cop- 
 perfield," and Lily Dale and her sister Bell in TroUope's 
 '* Small House at Allington " (though Trollope has a 
 worldly touch, and I do not wonder that his fine humour 
 seldom appeals to a girl), and Ethel Newcome, and 
 Jeanie Deans, and Maggie with her cousin, little Lucy, in 
 the " Mill on the Floss," and the Dorothea of " Middle- 
 march " are always ready to be her friends. 
 
 A girl ought to make the acquaintance of George 
 Eliot's fine heroines while she is still a girl, but she must 
 not think she can read George Eliot's novels once for 
 all while she is in her teens. They must be studied for 
 new meanings at ever}' stage of life, just as Shakspeare's 
 plays must be. 
 
 School-girls do not have much time for solid reading 
 beyond that prescribed by their teachers, and the thou- 
 sands of girls who must earn their living as soon as they 
 leave school have still less time ; but I hope that all who 
 can spare an hour a day for reading will spend part of it 
 on solid books. If we have a great deal of leisure, most 
 
WHAT SHALL WE READ? 109 
 
 of our reading should take the form of study. We may 
 for instance make ourselves at home in epoch after 
 epoch of history, or we may study one science after an- 
 other in something better than the school-girl fashion. 
 With less leisure, we may still read to some purpose by 
 spending a good many months on one subject. I once 
 heard a lady say, *' My daughter and I have spent the 
 whole winter in Greece." She meant that they had 
 read Greek history and Greek poetry and Greek phi- 
 losophy, and had looked at reproductions of Greek art, 
 though they had hardly been away from their own 
 chimney-corner. 
 
 Now there are thousands of books worth reading, and 
 nobody can read them all. There have been many ad- 
 mirable essays written on the choice of books. Emer- 
 son's essay on " Books " in the volume " Society and 
 Solitude " gives a splendid list of the great books of the 
 world. Many of these works are far beyond the powers 
 of young girls. I will not try to add to such a catalogue ; 
 but there are a {qw suggestions I wish earnestly to make. 
 One is that each reader should be guided by her natural 
 powers in choosing what to read. I do not mean that 
 we should read carelessly whatever strikes our fancy at 
 the moment ; but as all of us who are honest with our- 
 selves know what are our best gifts and our worst 
 faults, that we should choose the subjects and the books 
 which will develop our powers and correct our faults. 
 
no CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 For instance, if we love the Greeks and hate the Romans, 
 while we are indifferent to the Egyptians, let us by all 
 means make a thorough study of the Greeks, so that our 
 zeal may be according to knowledge ; but let us make a 
 thorough study of the Romans too, so that we may know 
 whether our ill-will is due to their character or our own. 
 Perhaps the study will show us some personal weaknesses 
 which especially need treatment. We can put off read- 
 ing about the Egyptians to a later date. Or, if we love 
 philosophy and hate science, or vice versGy the same 
 rule holds. 
 
 But whatever our tastes or talents, there are two kinds 
 of reading essential for all, fur men as well as women, 
 for old as well as young. Of course you know that one 
 of these is poetry. Sooner or later we must all know 
 Shakspeare and Milton, Dante and Homer, and parts of 
 Goethe by heart. These great poets rank with the Bible 
 and with the bibles of other races in their influence upon 
 us. And we cannot spare the lesser poets either. Girls 
 especially, to whom the *' Divine Comedy " or " Faust" 
 sometimes seem so remote as to be sealed books, can find 
 the most wholesome nutriment in Chaucer and Cowper 
 and Bums, in Whittier and Longfellow and Lowell, in 
 Mrs. Browning and Keats and Tennyson. Most of us 
 have to wait till past girlhood, I am afraid, to understand 
 Wordsworth ; and Browning, though he is worth the 
 effort, taxes the greatest of our mature powers. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE READ? Ill 
 
 Poetry cannot be translated, and yet the women who 
 do not read Greek cannot afford to miss what even a 
 translation can give of ^schylus and Sophocles and 
 Euripides. The characters in their dramas and the 
 high thought and action cannot be disguised even in the 
 prose of another language. 
 
 But after all, in poetry itself what we read is not the 
 important thing. We should read poetry to give us a 
 certain attitude of mind, a habit of thinking of noble 
 things, of keeping our spirit in harmony with beauty and 
 goodness and strength and love, that — 
 
 "All 
 The dreary intercourse of daily life 
 Shall [not] prevail against us." 
 
 *' Poetry is the fact," says Matthew Arnold, in his won- 
 derful essay at the beginning of Ward's '' English Poets." 
 
 The other kind of reading which is essential is the 
 news ! This is not because we need to know the daily 
 gossip of the whole world to save ourselves from daily 
 mortification on account of our ignorance, but for a very 
 different reason. The great object of our reading is to 
 keep our mind in a certain state. Now, if we should 
 read nothing but great poetry, we should lose touch with 
 common, every-day Hfe about us, and with all our fine 
 thoughts, we might grow weak and selfish. We want to 
 know how the whole world is living and acting. If we 
 are to help to make it better, we must know its sorrows, its 
 
112 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 faults, even its crimes. How could we help anybody if we 
 only gathered up our own robes out of the mire our fellow- 
 creatures have fallen into? That kind of virtue is so 
 weak that it is almost sure to give way in the moment of 
 pressure. Of course I do not mean that we want to 
 spend much time every day over a newspaper. A news- 
 paper almost always dissipates the mind. That is the 
 reason I cannot look with favour on Sunday papers. We 
 ought to save Sunday for the higher Ufe. 
 
 " Sundays the pillars are, 
 On which heav'n's palace arched lies." 
 
 "The week were dark, but for thy light; 
 Thy torch doth show the way." 
 
 There is a passage in Bryce's *' American Common- 
 wealth " in which he speaks of the attitude of mind pro- 
 duced by reading newspapers. He says that even if a 
 newspaper contains a great essay or poem, scarcely any 
 reader gets the full value of the fine thought because his 
 mind is not adjusted to receive it. He is hurrying 
 through the paper as fast as he can with the purpose of 
 getting at facts, not thoughts. This would be a sufficient 
 reason for not spending much time over newspapers, 
 even if there were no other ; and I should be very sorry 
 if American women should ever form the habit, which is 
 becoming so pernicious among American men, of depend- 
 ing on newspapers for their chief mental food. There 
 is not very much danger of this at present. Girls at 
 
WHAT SHALL WE READ? 1 13 
 
 least, not caring much for business or politics, find news- 
 papers very dull. There is more danger that they will 
 spend so much time over the lighter magazines, where 
 information and thought are served up piecemeal, that 
 they will have no time or strength for reading of value. 
 Nevertheless, a girl who wishes to develop into a well- 
 balanced woman must supplement her reading of great 
 poetry with a little reading of a dry newspaper. I think 
 a weekly paper much better for a girl just beginning to 
 read newspapers than a daily. She will then get the 
 important news without wasting her time over trash; 
 and when at last her interests become so wide that she 
 needs a daily paper, she will know how to discriminate 
 between what she wants to read and what she wants to 
 skip. 
 
X. 
 
 TRAVEL. 
 
 TRAVELLING is delightful. Even when it is 
 fatiguing, it is, as somebody says, " delightful to 
 have travelled." And as a means of gaining information 
 it is unsurpassed. Dr. Edward Everett Hale tells us that 
 this is the way to "realize our geography." It is the 
 way to realize other things, too. Not long ago, a young 
 girl told me she had heard a sermon in which the clergy- 
 man declared that he should like to look back at the end 
 of his life, and feel that every year he had seen something 
 more of God's beautiful world ; and that accordingly her 
 father had decided to take the whole family for a trip 
 across the continent, to visit the Rocky Mountains, the 
 Yosemite Valley, and the Yellowstone Park. Beauty is all 
 around us to be sure, but the new vision does often mean 
 more to us than the old one. After all, the real value of 
 travelling depends on the fact that we change our point of 
 view. A fine woman, who went from the East to make her 
 home in St. Louis some thirty years ago, when communica- 
 tion between different parts of the country was not so com- 
 
TRAVEL. 1 1 5 
 
 plete as now, said, " I felt that this change of home tested 
 me in every point. All my habits of life were changed, 
 and all the people I saw had different standards from those 
 at the East. I have had to decide what was essential and 
 what merely superficial in both manners and creed." 
 
 But we must have a definite point of view before it 
 will be of any use to go in search of a new standpoint. 
 We need to learn a great deal about the place where we 
 are born before it will be much more than dissipation to 
 travel. It always seems to me something of a misfor- 
 tune for a little child to be dragged over Europe, though 
 it is true enough that such a child does learn far more of 
 places and people than he could at home ; and if the 
 end of education is to speak French and German fluently, 
 it is necessary that the child should spend much time in 
 France and Germany when very young. 
 
 Travel is a great quickener in education, but it is not 
 the foundation of it. What does the Tower of London 
 mean to one who knows nothing of English history, or 
 Loch Katrine to one who reads the " Lady of the Lake " 
 for the first time in connection with the guide-book ? 
 
 I am glad to notice that so many fathers and mothers 
 with abundant means now seem to realize the importance 
 of having their children thoroughly trained at school and 
 in college before sending them abroad even to study. 
 Then they are all ready to see and understand with 
 enthusiasm. 
 
Il6 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 The mood in which one takes a journey is of impor- 
 tance. It is not often in a large party that all are in the 
 right mood. One is ill, and thinks only of her digestion. 
 Another has been hurried abroad to break off an unfor- 
 tunate love affair, etc. I know a delightful young 
 girl who is putting off a European trip for almost a year, 
 because she says solemnly that nothing shall be allowed 
 to interfere with class- day at Harvard next June ! Never- 
 theless, whatever the mood, new sights and sounds do 
 take us so effectually out of ourselves, that even the dys- 
 peptics and the unhappy usually come back from an 
 extended tour with invigorated bodies and minds. 
 
 If we had all the leisure and money we wanted, it 
 certainly would not be best to travel all the time. So 
 many different standpoints would only reduce our mental 
 condition to that of a kaleidoscope. The ideal plan 
 would, I think, be an outing of perhaps one month in 
 every twelve, and a long European or South American or 
 Asiatic tour about one year in five. Europe ought to be 
 seen, at least for the first time, within a few years after 
 leaving school, in order that the stimulus it gives us in 
 the study of art and history and literature should be 
 received early enough to be a distinct influence in the 
 choice of our studies of a life-time. 
 
 So few of us have either the leisure or the money to do 
 as we please, however, that perhaps it is hardly best to con- 
 sider any ideal which depends on these alone. We must 
 
TRAVEL. 
 
 117 
 
 take our journeys whenever we can, and few of us suffer 
 from a surfeit of travelling. Sometimes it is even neces- 
 sary that travel should be the chief means of education. 
 I know a family of girls who travelled from the time 
 they were eight or ten years old till they were past the 
 school age, first in America, then in Europe and the 
 East. Their father's business was such that there was no 
 alternative. But the father and mother were educated 
 people who knew what to see; and they had definite 
 principles which made it possible to give their daughters 
 fixed habits in spite of their constantly changing sur- 
 roundings. So the girls are well-educated. They studied 
 Roman history in Rome, and Greek history in Greece, 
 and art in the galleries of Florence and Dresden and 
 Paris. They read Coleridge and Shelley in the Vale of 
 Chamounix, and Bums at the Bridge of Doon, and Shaks- 
 peare everywhere. They acquired the modern languages 
 almost without knowing it. In climbing the great pyra- 
 mid, they learned more of Egypt than most of us ever 
 know. They reread their Bible carefully in the East. 
 Without the strong hand of the father and mother these 
 girls would probably have received merely a succession 
 of pleasant impressions ; but their parents taught them 
 how to compare one country or people or language with 
 another, and they were saved from superficiality. 
 
 Though most of us would not be the better for such 
 continual travel, we all need to change the point of 
 
Il8 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 view from time to time ; and few of us are so unfortunate 
 that we cannot sometimes do so, if we realize that it is 
 important. A lady once said to me, " When I found 
 that my home in the country must be broken up and that 
 I must come to the city and earn my living, I could not 
 bear to think of the change. But now I rejoice in it. I 
 was as narrow as a crack before I came, for everything 
 went on always in the same placid routine." 
 
 I had a friend to whose lot it fell to teach fourteen or 
 fifteen years in one school. She did not however grow 
 narrow or opinionated. *' I get my variety," she used to 
 say, with a smile, " in changing boarding-places ! " She 
 was not a fussy boarder ; but some cause or other usually 
 made it necessary to change once in two or three years, 
 and she was rather glad of it, because this gave her a 
 new aspect of life. Some people would have lamented 
 their hard fate without trying to see what they could get 
 from their experience. 
 
 " To make daily a new estimate, that is greatness," 
 says Emerson. If we are wise, a fresh set of circum- 
 stances will help us to make a new estimate. This is 
 what travel does for us if we do not travel too frequently. 
 
 I have always liked the German plan for girls. A 
 country girl, at sixteen or seventeen, is sent to live in the 
 family of some friend in the city, and a city girl is sent 
 in the same way into the country. These girls are to be 
 taught housekeeping. They pay no board and receive no 
 
TRAVEL. 1 19 
 
 wages, but do what they are told. They are treated as 
 daughters of the family, and they learn not only house- 
 keeping but new modes of life. 
 
 And now a few words as to how we shall travel. What 
 do we want to see in foreign lands ? I knew a young 
 lady who on her return from Europe could tell you what 
 she had had to eat in every hotel. She is not necessarily 
 to be condemned. If Mrs. Lincoln or Miss Corson 
 travel I have no doubt they can also tell what they 
 have to eat; and they will know it so accurately that 
 they will be able to show weary housekeepers all over 
 the world how to vary their monotonous bill-of-fare by 
 new and dainty dishes. But at the same time Mrs. Lin- 
 coln at least, and Miss Corson I dare say, will be able to 
 tell you about the English Cathedrals, or the palace of 
 Versailles. At all events, these ladies will pay attention 
 to their bill-of-fare for a purpose, and not because their 
 whole mind is set on what they have to eat. 
 
 Of course we cannot all see exactly the same sights. 
 Each of us is educated to the point of seeing some 
 things, but not all things. Let us, however, be sure to 
 look for the best we can see. One of my friends quotes 
 a friend of hers as saying that Europe seemed to him a 
 network of railways, leading from one great picture- 
 gallery to another. Only a cultivated person could think 
 of Europe in that way. But I know a highly cultivated 
 lady, and one who loves art, too, who says that the 
 
120 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 absorbing interest which Europe or any other country 
 has for her is in the people she sees. She loves the 
 whole human family, and likes to observe how the en- 
 vironment modifies the essential characteristics of each 
 member of it. 
 
 At least let us not spend our time when travelling in 
 looking at things we can see equally well at home. I saw 
 an English girl who was making her first trip up the Rhine 
 reading a novel all the way in spite of the anxiety of her 
 papa, who tried to call her attention to one point of 
 beauty after another. The novel may have been a good 
 one, but that was not the place to read it. 
 
 I once had only a few hours for a drive from Melrose 
 to Abbotsford. Knowing that every inch of the ground 
 must be rich in associations with Scott's novels and 
 poetry, I asked the driver to point out ever}'thing of 
 interest as we drove along. He was a good-natured 
 fellow and showed the greatest wish to please me. Every 
 minute or two he turned round with some remark for my 
 instruction. "This," he would say, impressively, "is 
 the new National Schoolhouse ; " " this is the Dissenting 
 Chapel," and so on and so on. 
 
 If we do not know what we want to see before we set 
 out on our travels, we shall miss much of the best which 
 lies in our pathway. If our previous education has not 
 been broad we cannot see all we would ; but I think 
 there are two things always to be looked for, and that if 
 
TRAVEL. 121 
 
 we look for these, our travelling will not be in vain. One 
 is beauty, — either of nature or of art ; especially of art, 
 perhaps, because nature is as beautiful at home as abroad. 
 The other is the present and past life of other nations, 
 for this teaches us our own relation to other people, and 
 shows us what is essential in our own ideals. For either 
 of these two objects a trip to Europe is better than a 
 journey to San Francisco. We sometimes hear people 
 say with a meritorious air that they should not be willing 
 to go to Europe till they had seen their own country 
 thoroughly. This has a conscientious sound, but is based 
 I think on a misconception of the purpose of travel. It 
 is true we must learn to know our own home before going 
 away from it, for there our duties begin. Our home 
 gives us the type of life with which all other types are to 
 be compared. But when we go away from home, we 
 want most to see the highest civilization and the most 
 perfect art, so that England and Italy are a better stimu- 
 lus for us than California and Alaska. I am glad that 
 some of my friends can see Sitka as well as Rome ; but 
 those of us whose leisure and money are limited enrich 
 our lives more by visiting Rome than Sitka, and as to 
 expense, I believe it really costs less. 
 
 One word may not be out of place in reference to the 
 temper we carry with us on our journeyings. A friend 
 who travelled through the East with a large party told 
 me that sometimes the fatigue of riding on horseback or 
 
122 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 on a camel was so great that she thought she could not 
 possibly keep up with the rest ; but that she nerved her- 
 self to go on, for she always wondered whether, in case 
 she should fall by the wayside, any one of that eager 
 company could spare time to stop and help her. 
 
 On the other hand, I remember an incident which 
 came to my notice in Rome. Two sisters had arranged 
 to go to St. Peter's for a special Easter service. They had 
 always longed to hear that one service in that one spot, 
 and now the opportunity of their lifetime had come. 
 A lady staying at the same hotel, hearing them make 
 their plan, asked to join them, fancying she too would 
 like to hear the music, though it was not a matter of 
 enough interest to her to have led her to make an inde- 
 pendent plan. She was, moreover, rather out of health, 
 so that she was very likely to break down in the midst 
 of any excursion. For these reasons, the sisters were 
 sorry she had proposed going with them, though they 
 were too kind to refuse her request. She delayed them 
 by her elaborate preparations, and I thought the elder 
 sister quite justified in saying decisively to her that they 
 would not wait five minutes longer. As it was they did 
 not reach the church till just as the service was begin- 
 ning, and at that moment, the self-innted guest was 
 taken ill. The younger sister turned pale with disap- 
 pointment when it proved that the guest could neither 
 go on nor be left alone. ** You must stay," said the 
 
TRAVEL. 123 
 
 elder sister, without an instant's hesitation. " She does 
 not need us both, I will go back to the hotel with her." 
 " But you will miss the service," pleaded the younger 
 sister, with tears in her eyes. " Yes," said the elder, se- 
 renely ; " but after all, what are we in the world for but 
 to make the best of it for everybody? " So she missed 
 the fulfilment of the dream of a lifetime, but she did not 
 miss something far better. You see she did not weakly 
 indulge the guest when the latter's carelessness seemed 
 likely to destroy the arrangement for the morning ; but 
 when her own cherished plan was interrupted by the 
 misfortune of another she did not waste a moment in 
 unavailing regret, but promptly gave up her own wishes ; 
 and I am not aware that she ever referred to the matter 
 again with any irritation. 
 
 Some of us must stay at home. We never have time 
 or money or opportunity to travel. How can we get the 
 best of travel without the fact ? 
 
 By enlarging our mental horizon. The study of bot- 
 any or of entomology, or still more of field geology, will 
 often change the face of a familiar landscape so much 
 that we shall not need to travel a thousand miles to see 
 a new earth. Miss Jewett in a wholesome little book for 
 girls called " Betty Leicester " tells us how a thorough 
 study of the history of the town we live in will give us 
 the key to the history of the whole country. If we do 
 
124 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 not see new nations, we can at least try to understand 
 the people in our own village ; and when we do this sym- 
 pathetically, we may leam as much from the Irish or 
 German or French families in our neighborhood as if 
 we lived a few weeks in a hotel in Dublin or Berlin or 
 Paris. And if our eyes are open to beauty, there is no 
 waste place so desolate that we may not see the glor)^ of 
 a fresh sunrise and a fresh sunset every day. 
 
XL 
 
 THE CULTIVATION OF A SENSE OF HUMOUR. 
 
 '* 1\ TY dear," said a gentleman to his wife, runs an 
 
 ^^■*' old anecdote, "you would n't see a joke if it 
 were fired at you out of an ii-inch Dahlgren." " Oh, 
 my dear," responded the wife, " you know they don't 
 fire jokes out of guns ! " 
 
 It does really seem like a piece of presumption to 
 suppose that one may cultivate a sense of humour. We 
 all know that a sense of humour is absolutely indispensa- 
 ble to lubricate the wheels of life, and we feel that it is 
 a special blessing of Heaven to be endowed with it ; but 
 who can dare to think of cultivating it ? 
 
 Perhaps if, as Emerson suggests, we could be generous 
 with our dignity as well as with our money, we might 
 find our perception of humour increasing. If we were 
 willing to laugh at a joke against ourselves, should we 
 not establish humour on a partially ethical basis ? And 
 everybody knows that ethics can be cultivated. 
 
 Nothing so often saves us from being ridiculous as a 
 sense of humour ; and on the other hand, nothing com- 
 forts us so much when we are ridiculous. 
 
126 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 Brothers are of inestimable value in cultivating a girl's 
 sense of humour. They see all her little foibles, and have 
 no false sensitiveness about presenting them in the most 
 picturesque and striking fashion for her contemplation. 
 Most girls cry freely under this discipline, but that is not 
 the way to cultivate a sense of humour. We ought to be 
 grateful to our brothers for making us so ridiculous in 
 private that we know better than to indulge in our sen- 
 timental airs and graces in public, which would make us 
 ridiculous before a hard-hearted audience. We ought 
 to encourage our brothers and laugh with them, espe- 
 cially when the laugh is against ourselves. The fact is, 
 we always laugh kindly at ourselves. Now, if our per- 
 ception of humour grows in this fashion, it is sure to re- 
 main kindly when we trust ourselves to laugh at other 
 people, for we know exactly how they feel, and make 
 the same excuses for their absurdities which we have had 
 so much practice in making for our own. 
 
 I fancy reading the genuine humourists, like Lamb 
 and Dickens, will keep us more alive to the sweetly 
 amusing side of things. 
 
 But on the whole I thiuK our best personal contribu- 
 tion to our education in humour is in making a distinct 
 effort to see the funny side of the petty annoyances which 
 cause half the trouble of life. Such elTorts will never be 
 thrown away even if we do not succeed in finding out 
 whether jokes are fired from guns or not, because we 
 
CULTIVATION OF A SENSE OF HUMOUR. 12/ 
 
 shall be so much better women in consequence. I re- 
 member the heroine of a novel, who when there was 
 nothing but bread for dinner cut it up in half a dozen 
 different ways and pretended to serve it in courses, — 
 soup, fish, roast, and so on. No doubt the bread actu- 
 ally digested better for the playful subterfuge. 
 
 "All my silver was stolen last week," said a lady, 
 gayly ; " but it is great fun to use pewter. You can al- 
 ways pretend that the reason the dinner is poor is be- 
 cause it tastes of the pewter, and not because it is burnt 
 or underdone or heavy." 
 
 It is a saving grace to be able and willing to make 
 small jokes. " I love and admire Miss Seaver," said a 
 young lady, ''but I am afraid of her; I should never 
 dare to make a poor joke before her." 
 
 I have often thought we were all too much afraid of 
 laughing at poor jokes. It is true we do not wish to 
 laugh at coarse ones. But we are too severe on weak 
 ones. Let us honour the good intention and the gentle 
 hope of pleasing which leads to their manufacture, and 
 pay them the tribute of a smile. 
 
 " I have often respected you," said one lady to an- 
 other who sat at the same boarding-house table, " when 
 I have observed the persistent good nature with which 
 you smile at every inane joke of those silly college boys." 
 
 " Oh, well, you know the boys are trying to be agree- 
 able," was the reply. " I can't bear to hurt their feelings." 
 
128 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 No one can be witty who is not bom to be ; but I am 
 half inclined to believe that the sense of humour belongs 
 to character, and may be cultivated. It requires quick 
 observation, but it also requires gentleness and kindli- 
 ness and wholesomeness. Now, to be wholesomely 
 alive to the amusing side of our daily irritations, we must 
 be well. When we are ill or tired or worn, every annoy- 
 ance annoys too much. We cannot look beneath it for 
 a joke, — though I do remember several delightful inva- 
 lids who made their sick-rooms sweet with laughter ; but 
 they had a genius for humour, and were exceptions which 
 prove the rule. Therefore as a final suggestion for the 
 cultivation of a sense of humour I present this, — 
 
 Do your best to be perfectly well at all times both in 
 body and mind. 
 
XII. 
 
 DULL GIRLS. 
 
 THERE is not so much difference as many people 
 think between bright girls and dull ones. 
 
 As there are all grades of dulness I hope that girls 
 who are sure they are bright will not skip this chapter, 
 especially as some of my remarks will apply to those 
 who are limited in time or money as well as in intellect. 
 Whether we are dull or bright, we wish to make of our- 
 selves all that can be made of the stuff. 
 
 It is not best to malign the stuff given us to work up 
 into a worthy fabric. Do not allow yourselves to think 
 you are duller than you are. If you cannot do one 
 thing, you can do another. I knew a girl who could not 
 learn arithmetic, but she led her class in botany. I 
 remember a boy who could not pass the college examina- 
 tions in Latin, who yet became a distinguished physician. 
 So, if you think you are dull, take special pains to find 
 out what your gift is, and cultivate that. Some of you 
 have beauty or grace or good-temper. Suppose you 
 make the most of these things. Even beauty can be 
 
 9 
 
130 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 used for something better than the gratification of vanity. 
 For instance, a beautiful woman can often make a needed 
 reform in dress attractive when a plain one would per- 
 haps make it absurd. Some of you, however, may be 
 l^lain and awkward as weii as dull. Perhaps you may 
 still have money or other opportunities which render 
 your part in the world as important as that of those who 
 have greater personal gifts. The first law for every dull 
 girl, and indeed for all of us, is this : — 
 
 Do not spend your time in mourning for the gifts 
 which were not given to you, but in learning how to use 
 those you have received. 
 
 No doubt, however, any dull girl who takes the trouble 
 to read a volume on self-culture has already the first 
 essential of culture, — teachableness. 
 
 I remember an amiable girl at school who worked over 
 her books from morning till night, but who could never 
 learn her lessons. I heard one of her most patient and 
 sympathetic teachers say of her, " I should not like to 
 try so hard for nothing." Now if we hope for any result 
 from our hard work, we must attempt to understand 
 what we can do. 
 
 How are you dull ? Have you a poor memory, or are 
 you wanting in the power of reasoning about things which 
 do not interest you? 
 
 It is pleasant and convenient to have a good memory, 
 but we need not be ashamed if it was not given to us. 
 
DULL GIRLS. I3I 
 
 I hope you all remember that Columbus discovered 
 America — though that has been disputed — and that 
 Milton wrote " Paradise Lost." But if in spite of faith- 
 ful study you cannot remember these things, you may be 
 sure they are of no importance to you, however valuable 
 to others. Some persons have the power of always 
 making any fact they do not know seem not worth the 
 knowing. " I take a certain pride," I once heard a young 
 girl say, " in not having read all the new books." I sup- 
 pose she meant that she had more important things to 
 do. Though she was not a learned young lady, she had 
 a fine, forcible character, unfailing amiability, and a 
 delightful sense of humour. All her time was well spent, 
 and all her conversation was entertaining. Why then 
 should she think it was necessary to read all the new 
 books ? Wisdom is always better than learning. Still, if 
 a studious girl grows up without being able to remember 
 who wrote " Paradise Lost '' — which we will let stand 
 for all the every-day facts most people blush to be igno- 
 rant of — it is certain that something is wrong in her 
 education. Probably she has tried to learn who wrote 
 too many books. A dull girl must not waste her energies 
 on too many subjects. 
 
 There are certain things everybody is expected to 
 know, and though it is not necessary you should know 
 them all — and indeed most bright women do not know 
 them all — yet it would be a good plan to spend your 
 
132 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 strength over these rather than over other things. I am 
 tempted to make out a Httle course of study for girls 
 who know they are dull, and perhaps it will do for those 
 who are hampered in other ways. 
 
 I. You want to read easily and intelligently ; and — 
 
 II. To write plainly and neatly. 
 
 III. I have a word to say about spelling. I once 
 knew an idiot girl who could spell such words as Cincin- 
 nati and Himalaya backwards as well as fonvards. On 
 the other hand, one of the most cultivated women I have 
 ever seen tells me that when she was a girl her father 
 made her a present of two dictionaries, one to be kept 
 upstairs and the other downstairs. " For, my dear," he 
 said, " I do not wish to see so much bad spelling in your 
 letters, and now you will have no excuse for not looking 
 up every word you are in doubt about." In the polite 
 world, an ill-spelled letter does carry disgrace with it ; 
 but if you are not a natural speller, I think it might be 
 as well to buy the dictionaries. 
 
 IV. Mathematics. Every girl needs a thorough knowl- 
 edge of mental arithmetic, as set forth in such a little 
 book as that of Warren Colburn, — the power to add, 
 subtract, multiply, and divide large numbers easily, and to 
 be accurate in keeping accounts. Most school-girls study 
 mathematics for eight or nine years, and there are few 
 who could not master the subjects I have mentioned if 
 they would give all the time they have to spend on mathe- 
 
DULL GIRLS. 133 
 
 matics to this rudimentary work. Most girls could do 
 more ; and I, at least, rejoice whenever one can go on to 
 higher and higher branches till, like Philippa Fawcett, 
 she carries all the prizes away from the University stu- 
 dents. The important point, however, is to do the 
 essential work first, and then we need not be troubled if 
 there is no time left for anything more. 
 
 V. Languages. The very dullest girls have a right 
 to give all their energies to learning to speak and write 
 English clearly and correctly. It is also worth while to 
 try to use the exact word to express the thought. The 
 grade just above this may study one other language. 
 French will probably be most available, as it is not hard 
 to translate. A dull girl who has special advantages may 
 perhaps learn still other languages, but it is not generally 
 best. 
 
 It is the privilege of dull girls and busy girls and deli- 
 cate girls to read translations without compunction. 
 They are not obliged to feel that they might do some- 
 thing better. Of course they can never appreciate the 
 Iliad as well as if they understood Greek, but they 
 can get a great deal that is of value from a translation. 
 Dorothea, in '^ Middlemarch," is grieved because learned 
 men get " so worn out on the way to great thoughts that 
 they have no power left to enjoy them." A dull girl has 
 a right to begin with great thoughts. 
 
 VI. Science. A dull girl need not try to learn much 
 
134 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 of more than one science. She may choose the one she 
 likes best and begin with the simplest book. For in- 
 stance if she studies botany, Gray's little volume " How 
 Plants Grow " will give her a delightful introduction to 
 the subject without obliging her to learn many hard 
 words. Now, a clever girl must analyze her flowers by 
 the most complete manual she can buy, but a dull girl 
 has a perfect right to the easiest 
 
 VII. History. Every girl who lives in the United 
 States must know something of its history. A dull girl 
 need not be ambitious to read through extensive trea- 
 tises. Suppose she takes a very little book and an en- 
 tertaining one, — such an one as that by T. W. Higginson, 
 for instance, — and learns it thoroughly. If she cannot do 
 that in one year, perhaps she can in two years ; or if not 
 in two, then in three. By that time she will have a 
 foundation for reading United States history, and I should 
 not be surprised if all through her life she should read 
 entertaining books of history with real zest. I do not say 
 that even then her education in history will not be super- 
 ficial, and yet I think it quite probable that it will go as 
 deep as that of the majority of her bright acquaintances. 
 
 Some simple history of England, Greece, Rome, 
 France, and Germany must follow. But a dull girl can 
 allow herself three or four years for each country. It is 
 not necessary that she should get her whole education in 
 school. Dickens's ** Child's Histor>' of England " is a 
 
DULL GIRLS. 1 35 
 
 good illustration of the kind of book I mean. That 
 gives the currently received facts of English history in a 
 very agreeable form. No doubt an accurate scholar 
 finds many mistakes in it ; but it certainly will do more 
 than many a greater work to give a dull girl a prelimi- 
 nary knowledge of England. 
 
 A dull gill must have entertaining books to read. By 
 virtue of her dulness she is allowed to study only the 
 most interesting things in the most interesting way. A 
 dull mind cannot digest a dull book, no matter how ad- 
 mirable it is. So, in spite of the inaccuracies which are 
 charged to the series of fascinating little biographies by 
 the Abbotts, I think they are still well worth reading by 
 any dull girl (as well as by a good many people who are 
 not dull) who wants to have a general knowledge of his- 
 tory. Miss Strickland's " Queens of England " is another 
 book which will hold the attention like a novel. 
 
 In these days of historical research, however, more 
 recent books are likely to be more correct. And some 
 late biographies are entertaining. Perhaps, for instance, 
 some of those included by Macmillan & Co. in their 
 " English Men of Action " series, by Dodd, Mead, & Co. 
 in their " Makers of America " series, and by Houghton, 
 Mifflin, & Co. in their " American Statesmen " series may 
 not be beyond the powers of dull girls. Very likely, 
 however, a dull girl can learn history better from stories. 
 Many a girl knows the facts of the Reformation from Mrs. 
 
136 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 Charles's charming " Schonberg-Cotta Family," who 
 would otherwise be quite ignorant of that epoch. 
 
 Of course a bright girl must have accurate knowledge, 
 but a dull girl has not always the choice. She can only 
 assimilate the kind of knowledge that belongs to her. 
 
 VIII. Geography. Other countries and people form 
 so important a subject of conversation in every civilized 
 community that a girl ignorant of geography is oftener 
 put to shame than if she were deficient in science or 
 arithmetic. Moreover there are so many delightful vol- 
 umes of travel that nothing is easier than to learn some- 
 thing of geography by reading them, especially if one has 
 the perseverance to look out the places mentioned on a 
 map. This seems to me a peculiarly suitable kind of read- 
 ing for dull girls. Though they are to be excused from 
 reading dull books, they want to read useful books ; and 
 though it is not their duty to study works beyond their 
 capacity, that does not mean that they are to be excused 
 from painstaking work within their power, such as the 
 drudgery of looking out places on a map. 
 
 IX. Literature. The dullest girl can afford to nt-glcct 
 language, science, history, and even mental arithmetic 
 better than she can afford to neglect literature. Every 
 one ought to read a few of the best books. Every one 
 who speaks the Eni^/ish hjfiguage vinst knim> something 
 of Shakspeare. I have often seen dull girls glow with 
 enthusiasm over the "Merchant of Venice," which is one 
 
DULL GIRLS. 1 37 
 
 of the best plays to begin with. A girl who has read a 
 dozen plays thoroughly has a very good literary founda- 
 tion. These should not be first read — at all events by 
 a stupid girl •— in the order of their greatness, and yet 
 her strength should be given as far as possible to the 
 greater plays. I will here suggest a good order for 
 reading a dozen of the best ones : — 
 
 I. The Merchant of Venice. 2. Julius Caesar. 3. 
 Macbeth. 4. A Midsummer Night's Dream. 5. Henry 
 VIII. 6. King Lear. 7. The Tempest. 8. King John. 
 9. Romeo and Juliet. 10. As You Like It. 11. 
 Hamlet. 12. Othello. 
 
 You can well afford to be half a dozen years in read- 
 ing these few plays. Only when you do read them, be 
 sure to give your freshest and best attention to them. 
 When you are familiar with them all, you will probably 
 want to add to the list Henry IV. and Henry V., Winter's 
 Tale, Cymbeline, and Richard III. ; and very likely you 
 will go on adding to the list all your life. But remem- 
 ber that it is not essential that you should read all 
 Shakspeare's plays, and that you should never expect 
 to exhaust all the meaning of a single one. The im- 
 portant point is that you should have the elevation of 
 mind which comes from association with such a poet as 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 Other poets you may read as you have time and in- 
 chnation ; but I hope Milton will be one of them. At 
 
138 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 all events, let a large part of the energy you give to real 
 study be given to the best poetry. 
 
 Much of your other reading will inevitably be novels. 
 If you are very dull, even novels that are valuable may be 
 hard reading. Scott is considered solid food by some 
 girls. If that is the case with you, do not be ashamed 
 to confess it. If Scott requires study, he is also worth 
 study, and so are all the great novelists. For recrea- 
 tion, you can always read some of the simple and sweet 
 story-tellers. You need not even despise children's 
 books. Many of us middle-aged people of average 
 brightness find pleasure and rest and even instruction in 
 good children's books. You cannot afford to spend any 
 time over poor books ; but if you steadily read good and 
 interesting novels as well as good and interesting chil- 
 dren's books, you will both enjoy your reading, and 
 you will in the end have a kind of education which 
 though not great will rest on solid foundations, — for every 
 good novel and every worthy book for children depends 
 for its vail j on the understanding the writer has of life 
 and character, while an entertaining book is usually full 
 of allusions to current events and manners which it is 
 useful and agreeable for any girl to know about. 
 
 X. Music, Drawing, and Other Arts. Arts like danc- 
 ing, horseback-riding, etc., require chiefly bodily training, 
 and need not be considered here, though they are of 
 great value, and luckily many a girl who is dull at her 
 
DULL GIRLS. 1 39 
 
 books excels without difficulty in these beautiful accom- 
 plishments. And often such a girl has some real artistic 
 gift. When she is so happy, she has a right to devote 
 herself to that. But no one art is essential, and if a girl 
 has no gift she has no corresponding duty. It is so 
 important, however, that every one should have some 
 artistic training, that even a dull girl must not be 
 an exception. She should try to cultivate any artistic 
 taste of which she has even a germ. She may not 
 have a good voice, but perhaps she can learn to sing 
 hymns. She may never be able to draw a tree, but 
 in trying to learn she may become able to appreciate 
 Corot's trees. 
 
 Indeed I think the attempt to make the most of the 
 smallest artistic gift is more necessary for dull girls than 
 bright ones ; for it is a theory of mine — borne out I 
 believe by facts — that the mission of dull girls who have 
 no special mission in the world is to fill all the waste 
 places with beauty. A girl who cannot master botany, 
 for instance, has all the more time to arrange flowers and 
 cultivate a beautiful garden. How many dull women 
 make exquisite homes because they can give their whole 
 heart to that work ! They know they can never do any- 
 thing great, and so they lavish care and thought on their 
 own little corner. If they are so unfortunate as to feel 
 that their little corner is the whole world, their devotion 
 to small things belittles them ; but if they simply look at 
 
140 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 it as the centre of the work they can do, it will become a 
 haven of beauty and repose for all who pass by. 
 
 I am not an advocate of fancy-work. A life given to 
 it is usually very poor. Yet fancy-work has its place. I 
 know a young lady whose delicate health has prevented 
 her from studying as her brothers and sisters have done. 
 The only work she could do has been to beautify her 
 own comer of the world. This she has done. She has her- 
 self a fragile loveliness which is heightened by the dainty 
 though simple dresses which she has time to plan. She is 
 like a beautiful old painting as she sits by the window with 
 her soft wools and rich embroidery silks. She does not 
 multiply tidies in a room till they bewilder the visitor, but 
 the necessary table-covers and piano-covers and napkins 
 and footstools have all intrinsic beauty from the patient, 
 affectionate work of her skilful fingers. If her heart were 
 all given to her fancy-work she would be sure to overload 
 her rooms ; but though she scarcely moves from her cen- 
 tre, she has an outlook on the world. She does a part of 
 the daily household work. All the beautiful cooking for 
 the family is hers. She puts the finishing touches to the 
 attractive table. There is large hospitality in the family, 
 and she is always sweet and fresh and ready to entertain 
 visitors. She takes them into the garden and gathers 
 flowers for them, or makes tea for them in the summer- 
 house. She is not a student, but she reads the best 
 novels. She is not a remarkable musician ; but she prac- 
 
DULL GIRLS. I4I 
 
 tises some good music every day, and is always ready to 
 play an acceptable second in a duet or an accompani- 
 ment to a song. Best of all, she has the unfailing sweet- 
 ness of temper which smoothes the way of the whole 
 household. I did not say that she was a dull girl, but 
 she might be dull and still do all these good deeds. 
 
 A dull woman, working in her own corner, who pauses 
 every day to get the *Mift " given her by Shakspeare, who 
 goes out of her corner every day to be refreshed by the 
 splendour of nature, and to enter into the life and 
 thought of people beyond her own family circle, and 
 who welcomes her friends hospitably to the one little 
 nook it is her province to make lovely, cannot be petty 
 though she works with small tools. 
 
 Some one is sure to say that the minimum of education 
 which I have set down for the dullest women does after 
 all involve more than many a bright woman ever attains. 
 It is so. Many a bright woman who reads incessantly 
 does not read Shakspeare, and girls who are struggling 
 with algebra often fail hopelessly in keeping their ac- 
 counts. I have taken for granted that our dull girls are 
 willing to study, and that they have the opportunity to do 
 so. In that case they can accomplish more than the 
 bright ones often do, if they are only determined to study 
 essentials and are not allured by the wish to make a show. 
 And they have one special advantage. If they recognize 
 
142 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 their dulness, they are safe from self-conceit, and that is 
 a pitfall which has destroyed many a bright girl who 
 would otherwise have been capable of an earnest and 
 useful life. 
 
 Character is at the foundation of all success. A dull 
 girl with character accomplishes, not the same thing, 
 to be sure, but something better than the bright girl 
 whose nature is trivial. 
 
 Not one of us is shut out from the best. 
 
XIII. 
 
 CLEVER GIRLS. 
 
 THERE are several dangers which beset clever girls. 
 They may become self-conceited, and they may 
 not realize their responsibilities. The same corrective 
 may be supplied in both these cases. If you are clever, 
 study hard subjects. 
 
 Many a brilliant girl goes on learning the rudiments 
 of language after language, or accumulating fact after 
 fact of history, without any definite object, simply from 
 the unconscious vanity which makes her wish to outshine 
 others. Yet most people can learn the rudiments of 
 everything. Real power of mind is shown in going be- 
 yond this point. If you hope to do this however, you 
 must first master the rudiments perfectly. A one-storey 
 building may be useful and picturesque though its foun- 
 dation is slight, but it never will do to attempt to rear a 
 structure of twelve storeys on an insecure foundation. If 
 you require absolute thoroughness and accuracy of your- 
 self from the beginning of your education, you will find 
 the task hard enough to keep you from self-conceit, for 
 
144 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 you will not be able to leam lessons in half an hour on 
 which other girls must spend an hour, and you will not 
 take pride in studying a dozen branches at a time when 
 your teachers advise you to be content with three or 
 four. And then you will form habits which will make it 
 possible for you to do some solid work later in life. I 
 should be glad to have you know twenty languages if you 
 like, or to have all the facts of history at your instant 
 command ; but a clever girl ought to feel that she has a 
 special task set her, that she must make the most that 
 can be made of the stuff. The world needs all our gifts. 
 A pretty girl, chattering French and Italian at a garden 
 party, may be quite as attractive and useful as an intel- 
 lectual girl poring over the philosophy of Hegel ; yet the 
 girl who is capable of reading Hegel should not fail to 
 do so, unless she is sure she can do something more im- 
 portant. Most girls cannot comprehend much of specu- 
 lative philosophy. It is a study for mature minds, and 
 those of unusual strength. But a few girls can make a 
 beginning in this direction even in their school days. 
 Others can set themselves the task for middle life. It is 
 not likely that any of my readers will ever add original 
 contributions to the subject ; but the enlargement of their 
 own minds will — if they are modest and generous — do 
 something for the enlightenment of the world. 
 
 At all events, let the clever girls read Plato, and not 
 only read, but study him, beginning with the Apology of 
 
CLEVER GIRLS. 145 
 
 Socrates, which ought to form a part of the education of 
 everybody, even I think of dull girls. 
 
 Logic is a branch of philosophy which a clever girl 
 cannot afford to neglect if she wishes to train her mind 
 for its highest uses. 
 
 Many clever girls have a love of literature, and would 
 like to read everything that has ever been written from 
 the cuneiform inscriptions to the last of Swinburne's 
 poems. I admit a kindred weakness. But would it not 
 be better for us all to make haste slowly, and read with 
 more thought than we can give when we are in a hurry? 
 
 There are two great poems which most school-girls 
 think beyond them, Dante's "Divine Comedy," and 
 Goethe's " Faust." On the other hand, there are those 
 who suppose they understand them at first reading. 
 Girls who are omnivorous readers will do well to begm 
 the study of these poems very early, and come back to 
 them from year to year all their lives. 
 
 Browning is a poet that a clever girl may not neglect. 
 She must not read him because it is the fashion, but be- 
 cause the message he brings to the world is so great. 
 She may have to learn every poem by heart before she 
 begins to see any meaning in it, but the meaning is there. 
 
 It would be idle for me to try to catalogue all the 
 kinds of work a clever girl may do ; but it is necessary 
 that she should determine to do real work, and not be 
 content with simply acquiring, — that is to say, she must 
 
 lo 
 
146 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 be willing to think. Her own tastes and abilities will de- 
 cide her special line of study. And if possible, she 
 ought to do some original work. There is however 
 one branch of investigation I wish to call particular 
 attention to, for it is of the deepest interest to women, 
 and it is so difficult that only a clever woman can hope 
 to make much headway in it. Moreover it would fur- 
 nish a safeguard against a third danger which threatens 
 gifted girls, — the danger that they will allow themselves 
 to be so absorbed in study as to forget their fellow- 
 creatures. This study is social science. 
 
 It is said that whereas the preponderance of elective 
 study a few years ago at Harvard was in the direction of 
 literature, it is now in that of political economy. Social 
 science and political economy are two branches of the 
 same subject, both of which are necessary ; but just at 
 present women are and possibly need to be most occu- 
 pied with social science. The complexity of modern life 
 makes it often essential that we should understand the 
 working of far-reaching laws of economics in order that 
 some of our very commonplace acts may do good and 
 not harm. You remember how Dorothea in " Middle- 
 march " wished to learn political economy so that she 
 might work for the poor without injuring them. A great 
 many American girls sympathize with her. It is bitter 
 to them to refuse a beggar on the street because the Asso- 
 ciated Charities have warned them it is wrong to give 
 
CLEVER GIRLS. I47 
 
 alms in that way. They are balked at every turn by 
 some scientific friend who tells them they will undermine 
 the characters of the poor and plunge the nation into dis- 
 tress if they follow the generous promptings of their own 
 hearts. They feel like Mr. Howells's " Annie Kilburn," 
 after she had tried in vain to use her money for the good 
 of others, that it is mere impertinence to ask a tramp to 
 saw wood before giving him a breakfast, since they have 
 their own dinner of many courses without lifting a finger 
 themselves. 
 
 I will risk attempting to define the spheres of political 
 economy and social science. Even if I misunderstand 
 the terms, it will not be of much consequence, for I shall 
 at least make clear, I hope, just what it is that girls need 
 to know in this department of study. Political economy 
 seeks to benefit the whole civilized world by laying down 
 the laws which govern the production and distribution of 
 material wealth. Individuals must often be sacrificed to 
 the general good. Social science, on the other hand, 
 seeks to promote the true welfare of every individual 
 both materially and spiritually ; but in its choice between 
 means in themselves equally worthy, it must use those 
 which by helping one individual at a given time will not 
 injure many more for a longer time. Such a problem 
 was not so hard a few generations ago, when each little 
 community was sufficient to itself, and everybody knew 
 the needs and capacities of any one he was called upon 
 
148 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 to help. But now when the price of grain in Chicago 
 may cause a child to starv^e to death in London, the 
 problem is one of the gravest difficulty. The most en- 
 lightened political economy is not yet competent to solve 
 it, but it is very important that all of us should act up to 
 the highest positive knowledge yet gained by the most 
 powerful minds. And so it seems to me necessary that 
 even girls should begin to study political economy. 
 Nevertheless there is such a strong tendency among men 
 to forget individuals while theorizing about the masses, 
 that it is even more important for women to keep the 
 balance by laying great stress on social science. If we 
 are ready to help individuals whenever and wherever we 
 can, if we are ready to enter into the lives of others and 
 always give the best we have to give whether of money 
 or time or thought or character, it will certainly be better 
 than if we began to study at the other end, and never 
 went far enough to get at the individual at all. There 
 are those who think that loving-kindness will do every- 
 thing, and it is indeed one of the most potent forces in 
 the universe. Still, if every man and woman in Boston 
 were alive with love to all his fellow-creatures and some 
 railroad accident should cut off the city's supply of fresh 
 milk for a few days, many little children would die. Lov- 
 ing-kindness is indeed f^ir better than food, but what sort 
 of loving-kindness would that be which neglected to find 
 out the laws necessary to supply the babies with milk? 
 
CLEVER GIRLS. I49 
 
 Girls then are to learn social science by working for 
 individuals ; but in order that they may work to the best 
 purpose, they need to learn something of political 
 economy. 
 
 This is a very difficult study, requiring a strong mind, 
 trained judgment, and perseverance. A great many men 
 and women cannot make anything out of it j and indeed 
 new problems are arising constantly in these days which 
 show that the questions we had supposed answered once 
 for all were answered without full data, so that it is any- 
 thing but an exact science. Why should a girl lose her- 
 self in its intricacies? I am forced to admit that it is 
 beyond the range of most girls. A slight study of it is 
 almost worse than none. It certainly is so unless the 
 student has the rare balance of character which allows 
 her to realize that she must see a scientific fact or theory 
 on all sides and test it in all lights before she has a right 
 to be sure of it. Only a girl who is intellectually modest 
 should begin the study, and then only if she is willing to 
 go on with it all her life. 
 
 Nevertheless, as I think there is no inherent reason 
 why girls may not do at least as much as their brothers 
 in this direction, — for boys, too, are stupid and one- 
 sided, — and as women sorely need this knowledge for 
 much of the practical work which is coming so largely 
 into their hands, I do wish that every girl who knows 
 that she has a strong brain, and who feels that she has 
 
150 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 determination enough to cany on hard work for many 
 years, would make a systematic study of political economy. 
 I say systematic, because to study one question — the 
 land question, for instance — by itself would be like 
 trying to solve a problem in the sixth book of Euclid 
 when you knew nothing about the first book. But while 
 in geometry one step leads irresistibly to another, no 
 one yet has produced a scheme of political economy 
 which has no flaw in its reasoning. So, while you may 
 go on in considerable security in geometry if you remem- 
 ber your results even if you forget your methods of prov- 
 ing each theorem, it is not so in political economy. A 
 fallacy which you could not see at the beginning may 
 bring you into fatal error at the end if you have not so 
 made every step of the reasoning your own that you can 
 recall it with ease at any moment. 
 
 Many years ago John Stuart Mill wrote what is con- 
 sidered by most thinkers the standard treatise on politi- 
 cal economy. He had a powerful and logical mind ; and 
 gathered up the result of previous thinkers, and not only 
 presented them clearly, but added much valuable matter 
 of his own. No one of equal ability has written on the 
 subject since ; so his work is still the treatise to be com- 
 pletely mastered first by one who wishes to know any- 
 thing in earnest of political economy. 
 
 But since his day, advancing civiHzation has changed 
 the aspect of the world. He scarcely alludes to many 
 
CLEVER GIRLS. 15I 
 
 of the burning questions of the present time. Moreover, 
 thoughtful critics have been able to show that there are 
 joints even in his shining armour ; so that if you were to 
 conquer Mill and stop there, you would hardly be any 
 better fitted for your own personal duties than you are 
 now. 
 
 After you have mastered Mill however, you will be in 
 a condition to attack any one of the current questions 
 which particularly interests you. Every few years some 
 new book appears which attracts wide attention, — such 
 a book for instance as Henry George's " Progress and 
 Poverty'* or Bellamy's "Looking Backward." Now, 
 whether the theories of these writers are correct or not, 
 they have to be fully understood by any of us who hope 
 to solve the problems of the day, because their influence 
 is so great. Unless we ourselves understand them, we 
 cannot deal intelligently with the mass of men and 
 women who are their eager champions. So even if such 
 books prove to be short-lived by reason of their errors, 
 the student of political economy must give them serious 
 attention ; and after reading the books themselves, it is 
 necessary to read such answers to them as are made by 
 men of integrity and power. It may be that we have 
 been carried away by brilliant reasoning whose fallacies 
 were too subtile for us to discover. On the other hand 
 it may be the answers will seem less convincing than the 
 original argument. Or it may be they will simply clear 
 
152 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 away the fallacies, and leave the main argument irresisti- 
 ble. It will never do to accept any new theory without 
 this conscientious study, and it will seldom do to accept 
 any without qualifications. 
 
 It will be thought I have made a very short list of 
 books on these subjects. The actual list of those worth 
 reading is very long, but all I can hope to do is to start 
 a few earnest intellectual girls in a pathway which need 
 not be retraced. I think a great deal of this solid read- 
 ing is necessary as a foundation before a woman — or a 
 man either for that matter — can be prepared to consi- 
 der the economic questions discussed in the newspapers 
 at all. 
 
 Most of us would be much helped in such study, if we 
 could discuss every question fully with other intelligent 
 people before we made up our minds on it. In many 
 places there are political clubs for this purpose. I know 
 a clear-minded woman who started one in a small coun- 
 try town, and it became a centre of practical thought 
 and action for all the sensible and honest people of the 
 region. But alas ! many of us — and here I must con- 
 fess I am afraid women fail oftcner than men — make up 
 our minds on a question with very little thought or study, 
 and then get angry with everybody who does not agree 
 with us. 
 
T 
 
 XIV. 
 
 MORAL CULTURE. 
 
 HOUGH most of the previous chapters have been 
 given to the culture of the mind, I hope I have 
 made it clear that this can have no real value unless 
 every intellectual question is decided by moral standards. 
 Indeed it is difficult to speak of moral training by itself. 
 We are to do right ; but a very large number of the par- 
 ticular duties we ought to do depend on our mental de- 
 velopment, and others still on our physical condition, — 
 for which we are often responsible. We show our moral 
 character through our bodies and our minds much 
 oftener than we sometimes like to admit. 
 
 There are broad moral principles, however, which 
 we must first recognize and then act upon, though we 
 may seem to apply them to things as trivial as ventilating 
 a room or learning an arithmetic lesson. 
 
 The three essential qualities of a moral character are 
 right feeling, right thinking, and right doing. I am 
 rather inclined to think that we have more power to do 
 right than to feel aright or even to think aright, and 
 
154 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 SO I shall begin this part of my subject by a chapter on 
 the culture of the will. 
 
 Right thinking involves good judgment. This is 
 largely an intellectual quality ; but the resolution to take 
 the pains needed to form a good judgment belongs to 
 the moral nature, and it is by constantly using our will 
 in carrying out those plans which our judgment approves 
 that we gain the poise of mind which helps us to think 
 truly on all matters. For this reason, I shall next give a 
 chapter to culture in justice, which I believe involves 
 culture in truthfulness. 
 
 It is harder to reach the feelings than either the deeds 
 or the thoughts. I mean it is a harder task to change 
 our own feelings than either to do our duty or to decide 
 correctly what we ought to do. Of course, if we are ex- 
 citable, we may be very easily touched by the words or 
 acts of other people, and in that case we ought to be 
 very careful to place ourselves always among those influ- 
 ences which rouse our best feelings. But self-culture 
 includes the attempt to cultivate our best feelings our- 
 selves. In the broad sense '* Love is the fulfilling of the 
 law," so that the little I feel able to say on this branch 
 of my subject I shall say in a chapter on the cultivation 
 of a spirit of love. 
 
 I do not feel quite sure that all girls — even all good 
 girls — are entirely convinced that goodness is the one 
 
MORAL CULTURE. 15$ 
 
 thing needful Alma, the gifted young artist in "A 
 Hazard of New Fortunes," exclaims impatiently in refer- 
 ence to the quotation "Be good, sweet child, and let 
 who will be clever," " Just as if any girl would care about 
 being good who had the least chance of being clever ! " 
 That is rather an extreme statement. Alma was on the 
 whole a very good girl herself. I think it is rarely the case 
 that a clever girl goes far wrong, — at least according 
 to the common standards. And yet Alma did speak out 
 the feeling of a great many bright girls who have a vague 
 idea that in some way — just how they would find it hard 
 to tell — their brightness is more than an equivalent for 
 goodness. They have unconsciously the same kind of 
 foolish vanity which makes so many handsome girls intol- 
 erable because they assume that their beauty is a suffi- 
 cient contribution to the world from them, and that they 
 need add to it neither sweetness nor brightness. But if 
 a clever girl is not better than a stupid one, she is neces- 
 sarily worse through the waste of better powers. 
 
 The founders of the first boarding-schools for girls 
 which were established in Massachusetts, such as that of 
 Miss Grant and Miss Lyon at Ipswich, the Wheaton 
 Seminary at Norton, Abbot Academy at Andover, Brad- 
 ford Academy, Mount Holyoke Seminary, and others, rec- 
 ognized the fact that the moral nature is higher than the 
 intellectual, though they were ready to make great sacri- 
 fices for a better mental development. Such schools, 
 
156 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 and those upon the same plan that sprang up all over 
 the country, have always stood firm for that idea, and 
 have scorned any system of training in which character 
 and intellect did not go hand in hand. It must be 
 admitted that they have sometimes held a narrow creed, 
 and have made mistakes of judgment ; but no creed is 
 so stultifying as worldliness, and these schools have always 
 been essentially Christian. 
 
 In some of these schools it used to be the custom, and 
 perhaps it is so still, to send home reports not only of 
 the scholarship of the pupils but of their conduct, 
 promptness, care of health, care of wardrobe, care of 
 room, and the cash account. Some of the clever girls 
 were impatient of such oversight. If their reports 
 for scholarship stood high they troubled themselves 
 very little about holes in their stockings or dust in 
 the comers of their rooms. I remember once hearing 
 a group of girls discussing the matter. They were 
 all bright and neat and pretty and well-intcniioncd 
 girls ; but some of them thought no harm was done if 
 they saved their stockings for their mothers to mend, 
 or if they ate candy without permission, or if they whis- 
 pered to their room-mates after the bell for the lights to 
 be put out at night. One of them, however, was of a 
 different mind. She was the most beautiful girl of tne 
 group. I see her now as she stood among them, stately 
 and fair, with her golden hair and deep blue eyes. She 
 
MORAL CULTURE. 157 
 
 was also one of the most intellectual of the girls, and 
 moreover so full of life and spirit and fun that she was 
 popular even with those of her schoolmates who could 
 not endure " a dig." And this is what she said : *^ I should 
 hate to fail in a lesson ; but I should feel a great deal 
 worse not to have a perfect mark for care of room, or 
 wardrobe, or for any of those things." 
 
 **How can you say so, Mary?" cried a lively girl. 
 ** When the teachers are so fussy, too ! " 
 
 "Why, don't you see," returned Mary, very earnestly, 
 " I might try my best, and still fail in a lesson. I might 
 not understand it, or I might forget. When my father 
 and mother see my report, of course they think of that. 
 But I can be prompt, and I can keep all the rules ; so if I 
 have low marks in my general report, they will know that 
 I am to blame. I could not bear to send home such a 
 report as that." 
 
 I think she was right. Perhaps the rules were too 
 stringent, and their multiplicity may sometimes have 
 made the girls nervous ; though for that matter, if all the 
 girls had had Mary's spirit, the rules could soon have 
 been modified. The point, however, is this : we ought 
 to care more for the kind of excellence which depends 
 on our own will than for that which depends on our nat- 
 ural gifts, for it is the will which gives a moral quality to 
 an act. 
 
 This is the spirit which I should like to see animating 
 
158 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 not only every girl, but every man, woman, and child. It 
 is akin to religion. Perhaps it is the strongest element 
 in religion, for it is the " consecration of ourselves to the 
 best." The feeling of dependence on the mighty Love 
 which rules the universe, which is the blossom of the 
 religious life, is not always within our power, and so not 
 essential, though so precious ; but the determination to 
 hold fast to the highest we know may always be ours, and 
 with this strong root in the soil, the plant cannot fail at 
 last to blossom. 
 
 Universal Love does enfold us even when we are un- 
 conscious of it ; and so, if we hold ourselves ready to 
 receive it, the blessing always descends upon us at last. 
 The opening of our hearts and minds to the best is es- 
 sentially prayer, the kind of prayer which should be 
 " without ceasing," and which is possible in the midst 
 even of an anxious crowd. But it is so much easier to 
 recover a high tone of mind when we are quiet and 
 alone that those of us who are in earnest in our wish 
 for the best life will not lightly suffer the days to go by 
 
 without — 
 
 •' Some part 
 
 Free for a Sabbath of the heart." 
 
 It is not always easy to find time to be alone. In the 
 old-flishioned boarding-schools I have spoken of, it was 
 the first thing arranged for on the programme of daily 
 occupations, and necessarily so ; for where several girls 
 
MORAL CULTURE. 15*9 
 
 occupied the same room, it would have been almost im- 
 possible for any of them to depend upon a moment 
 alone if there had not been some definite portion set 
 apart for "silent time." 
 
 A woman who orders her own household ought to re- 
 member this great need, and try to make room for it. 
 But some of us do not have the ordering of our days. 
 We are claimed by imperative duties from the moment 
 we wake till we sink exhausted at night. The only quiet 
 possible to us is inward quiet — and for that we must 
 strive hard. 
 
 In Charlotte Bronte's story " Villette," little Paulina 
 de Bassompierre is represented as speaking with beauti- 
 ful simplicity of a letter she had received from her lover 
 directly after breakfast. She held it in her hand a few 
 moments, thinking it too soon " to drink that draught," 
 for "the sparkle in the cup was too beautiful." She 
 says : — 
 
 " Then I remembered all at once that I had not said my 
 prayers that morning. Having heard Papa go down to 
 breakfast a litde earlier than usual, I had been afraid of keep- 
 ing him waiting, and had hastened to join him as soon as 
 dressed, thinking no harm to put oft my prayers till after- 
 wards. Some people would say I ought to have served God 
 first and then man ; but I don't think Heaven could be jeal- 
 ous of anything I might do for Papa. I believe I am super- 
 stitious. A voice seemed now to say that another feeling 
 than filial affection was in question ; to urge me to pray be- 
 fore I dared to read what I so longed to read ; to deny myself 
 
l60 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 yet a moment, and remember first a great duty. I put the 
 letter down and said my prayers, adding at the end a strong 
 entreaty that whatever happened, I might not be tempted or 
 led to cause Papa any sorrow, and might never, in caring for 
 others, neglect him." 
 
 " Saying prayers " is not always a duty ; but who can 
 read Paulina's simple words without feeling that she made 
 the true choice between active goodness and quiet com- 
 munion with the Spirit of Goodness ? 
 
XV. 
 
 THE TRAINING OF THE WILL. 
 
 T DO not feel that it is my place to discuss the knotty 
 
 problem of the freedom of the will. Whether we 
 
 are free or not, it is always wholesome to act as if we 
 
 were free. This is the doctrine not only of so great a 
 
 philosopher as Kant, but the principle of every man or 
 
 woman who leads a life of moral growth. 
 
 " When duty whispers low, 'Thou must!' 
 The youth replies, ' I can.' " 
 
 Every time we act upon this principle, we make it 
 easier to act upon it again. In this way, we become 
 constantly freer and freer to do right ! We cannot al- 
 ways control our feelings or our thoughts or our judg- 
 ments. We cannot even always do what we know we 
 ought to do and what we try to do, for we have not al- 
 ways moral force enough to carry out our attempt. But 
 if we keep on trying, we shall have more and more suc- 
 cess. In striving for a moral victory, it is not possible 
 to lose the battle. The battle is the victory. 
 
 Many years ago Dr. Andrew Peabody preached a 
 
 baccalaureate sermon at Harvard College on this subject. 
 
 II 
 
l62 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 I did not hear the sermon, and do not even know his 
 text, but I know his argument in the most practical way, 
 through hearing it quoted again and again by a young 
 girl on whom it made a great impression. He said that 
 we often excused ourselves for wrong deeds and words 
 on the ground that temptation came to us suddenly, and 
 that we acted involuntarily before we had time to rally 
 our forces. He admitted this as a valid excuse for those 
 particular acts and words ; but he said that the true re- 
 sponsibility lay further back, — that temptations were 
 continually coming to us when we did have time to think ; 
 that if we yielded to these, we not only did wrong at 
 once, but that we weakened the moral fibre so that we 
 did wrong in other instances when we had no lime to 
 think ; and that if we resisted the temptation when we 
 could resist, we were forming a habit of feeling and action 
 which would by and by help us to do right unhesitatingly 
 and spontaneously. 
 
 So Emerson says, *' The unremitting retention of 
 simple and high sentiments in obscure duties is harden- 
 ing the character to that temper which will work with 
 honour if need be in the tumult or on the scaffold." 
 And Carlyle quotes Goethe : *' Do the duty which lies 
 nearest thee : thy second duty will already have become 
 clearer." And so on and so on. But it is life we need 
 more than quotations. There is not much to be said, 
 after all, and yet I wish I knew how to say something so 
 
THE TRAINING OF THE WILL. 163 
 
 Strong that it would cling to every girl's memory and in- 
 sist on being obeyed. 
 
 We do not wish to be wilful ; we wish to have a will 
 so firm that it can never yield to wrong, but so firm that 
 it yields instantly to right, — a perfectly disciplined will. 
 It is the untrained horse that balks or that shies ; but the 
 thorough-bred horse stands still the moment his master 
 speaks, and he turns to the right or left at the lightest 
 touch of the bridle. 
 
 Obstinacy is the determination to have our own way ; 
 firmness is the determination to take the right way. 
 One who has a firm will purposely gives up non-essentials 
 in order to have more power in essentials. 
 
 In " Framley Parsonage " Trollope describes an English 
 clergyman as making a stand against the great lady of 
 the parish in a trifling matter. His wife begs him to 
 yield, for she says if he gains his own way in this, he 
 will hardly have the courage to make another stand at 
 once, and yet that he is sure to have occasion to do so 
 soon, and very likely in the next case a principle will be 
 involved. But the clergyman persists, and the result is 
 just what his wife predicted. Indeed, he is almost forced 
 to give up a principle in the end because he would not 
 give up a fancy in the beginning. His will was weak 
 all through, as weak when he was headstrong and insisted 
 on having his own way as when he was forced to give 
 it up. 
 
1 64 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 There is a kind of strong will which spends itself in 
 
 controlling others. " Is Mr. king of this town ? " 
 
 asked a young man not long ago. Such a will may be 
 cultivated, but it ends in moral degradation. In some 
 cases, indeed, it is our duty to control others. A mother 
 must control a child, and a teacher her scholars. There 
 are upright men of sound intellect who know they ought 
 to make their influence felt in public affairs. However 
 weak and incapable we may feel, we have no right to 
 shirk any responsibility which plainly belongs to us. We 
 must try to do our part even if we end in failure. 
 
 But most girls at least do not have such a task set 
 them. Their task is to train their own will sometimes 
 to yield to others cheerfully, sometimes to do a difficult 
 act. 
 
 One of my friends was once very ill for many weeks. 
 At last she began to improve, and one day the doctors 
 said she ought to get up. She was a woman of great 
 energy and courage, but she thought it would be impos- 
 sible to obey them. She was so weak and sore and 
 racked with pain that she could only turn her face away 
 to hide the tears. But the doctors urged the point ; 
 they told her that the disease had been checked, though 
 she could not realize it, and that the weakness and suf- 
 fering she now felt were due to the nervous strain. She 
 understood them and believed them, but she still felt 
 
THE TRAINING OF THE WILL. 1 65 
 
 that she could not move. She asked them to lift her up 
 and make her walk. They told her that would do no 
 good, for the time had come when she must use her 
 will or she would be bedridden for life. And then she 
 summoned all her powers, and succeeded in moving. 
 She told me that she had never suffered such agony in 
 her life. Yet she gradually won the victory over her 
 nerves, and was saved from the fate which had almost 
 overwhelmed her. I have related this anecdote to show 
 what the will can do to control the body ; but it has a 
 moral significance. Some nervous invalids could not 
 have done what she did, not because they were really 
 more diseased, but because they had not previously 
 trained their will to perfect obedience to duty. My 
 friend had disciplined her will all her life. It was be- 
 cause she had accustomed her body in health to obey 
 the light tasks set it by her reason, that she was able to 
 command its obedience when a feather would have turned 
 the scale against her. 
 
 Her act was the physical counterpart of what Matthew 
 Arnold means when he says, — 
 
 " We cannot kindle when we will 
 The fire that in the heart resides, 
 But tasks in hours of insight willed 
 Can be in hours of gloom fulfilled." 
 
 The power of will is sometimes thought to belong only 
 to those who are highly developed mentally ; but one of 
 
1 66 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 the finest instances of it I have ever seen myself was in a 
 little boy in a school for the feeble-minded. This child 
 was about twelve years old when he was sent to the 
 school, and at that time he had scarcely learned to talk. 
 He had a curious fancy for a flat-iron. It is very com- 
 mon for a feeble-minded child to have some such fancy, 
 and as long as it is indulged it is almost impossible to 
 teach him anything ; so that as soon as his teacher dis- 
 covered his peculiarity, she took care not to allow him 
 to see a flat-iron. Under these circumstances, he began 
 to learn something, though slowly and with great diffi- 
 culty. It soon appeared that ignorant and deficient as 
 he was, he was docile and ambitious. These two quaU- 
 ties are very rare among children like him. But from 
 time to time he would suddenly lapse into his old dense 
 stupidity, and no longer seem to make any effort to 
 emerge from it. This was usually caused by the sight 
 of a flat-iron. Even the picture of one would make him 
 look incredibly silly. Once for several weeks he re- 
 mained inaccessible to all the efforts of his teacher, until 
 she finally discovered the reason. He had found a flat- 
 iron, which he kept in his desk. She took it away from 
 him, and talked seriously with him. She did make him 
 understand that he could not improve as long as he in- 
 dulged his monomania. He shed many tears, for he 
 had a terribly sincere ambition, though its flight was not 
 high ; still, when it came to the question of giving up 
 
THE TRAINING OF THE WILL. 167 
 
 the flat-iron he could not consent; he thought he 
 would rather keep it even if he never learned anything. 
 It was however taken away, and gradually his own in- 
 terest in his pursuits returned. They were simple pur- 
 suits. He learned to build a block house, to draw the 
 picture of a castle on the blackboard, to write his name, 
 to string beads according to a definite pattern; he 
 even began to learn to read. He made such steady 
 progress that his teacher often gratified him by calling 
 him a '* big boy," — a term which he considered to con- 
 vey the highest praise. 
 
 At last, however, came another relapse. The teacher 
 searched his desk and found nothing. She frowned upon 
 him and called him a " little boy ; " but all in vain. He 
 wept, but continued to be silly and inattentive. Just as 
 she was almost at the end of her truly sublime patience, 
 however, he came up to her one day, hanging his head 
 in a shamefaced way, and put into her hands a flat-iron 
 without a handle which he had been secretly carrying 
 about under his jacket. '' Me not little boy any more," 
 he said, with downcast eyes. She felt that in an instant 
 the clouds had rolled away and the victory was won. 
 And so it proved. He never again, of his own accord, 
 touched a flat-iron, though sometimes he saw one acci- 
 dentally, and it never failed to exert the old influence 
 upon him. Two years later, by dint of infinite pains on 
 the part of both his teacher and himself, he had learned 
 
1 68 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 to read a little in a primer ; but even then he could not 
 speak plainly. " Now, Robert," said his teacher, at the 
 beginning of a new year, " it is time to pronounce your 
 words clearly." Robert smiled and nodded. He stood 
 up as he had been taught to do, placed his heels together 
 at an angle of forty-five degrees, held up his head, threw 
 his shoulders back, placed his book at exactly the right 
 distance from his eyes, and was ready to begin. The 
 teacher said aftenvards that it was pathetic to see how 
 perfectly he remembered everything she had taught him 
 the year before, and how anxious he was to obey her to 
 the letter. She said it humbled her to think that she was 
 so much less eager to use her greater powers in the very 
 best way. The first sentence in his lesson was, " The 
 leaves are green." He could not pronounce the word 
 *' leaves ; " he called it *' neeves." The teacher repeated 
 it again and again, ** L-eaves." " L-eaves are neen," 
 said the boy, with the utmost care. "G-r-een," said 
 the teacher, pronouncing the first letters phonetically. 
 "G-r-een," said the boy, patiently. They went on so for 
 a few minutes, when the teacher noticed that the child 
 seemed to breathe with difficulty. *' You need not read 
 any more if you are tired," she said ; but the boy signified 
 his desire to go on. He held himself erect, he did not 
 falter, but she saw a dark and then an ashen look come 
 over his earnest face. " Robert," she said, " you are too 
 tired to read ; we will leave the lesson till to-morrow." 
 
THE TRAINING OF THE WILL. 1 69 
 
 But before it was time for the next day's lesson Robert 
 was dead. He was dying when he had raised his head 
 so erect, and had followed every tone of his teacher's 
 voice so faithfully. It was simply by the power of his 
 will that he had been able to go on. 
 
 I have told Robert's story at length because it seems to 
 me to show clearly what can be done by a will set to do the 
 right. I think that Robert in his short life did a great 
 work which most of us never accomplish fully, even with 
 our greater gifts and advantages. He disciplined his will 
 so that it did not fail him even at the extreme moment. 
 
 Let me suggest some points in his story which may 
 otherwise be overlooked. At first, he was really inca- 
 pable of controlling himself. He did not know that a 
 flat-iron did him any harm. Even when he did know 
 it, he had not the moral power to give it up ; but when 
 he was placed under the right training, and the flat-iron 
 was taken away, he used all the little power he had in 
 obeying his teacher and in learning the tasks set him. 
 In this way he gained new power, till at last he had so 
 increased his strength that he was able to make what was 
 to him the supreme sacrifice. After that, all was easy. 
 There was no longer any hindrance. His mental powers 
 were no better than before. He could never advance 
 very far, but he advanced steadily. There was never 
 again a moment of halting. 
 
 His teacher afterwards taught brighter pupils. " It is 
 
170 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 very hard for me to respect my scholars sometimes," she 
 said. *^ When I see how willing they are to waste their 
 powers, and how satisfied to do only half their duties, I 
 think of Robert. If he had been gifted as they are, he 
 would have been a great man, a blessing to the world. 
 But after all," she added, " I ought not to judge the 
 children harshly. The difference between the bright and 
 the dull is not so great as we think. I suppose these chil- 
 dren cling to some pet habit which dwarfs their powers, 
 just as Robert clung to his flat-iron, and it is not so easy 
 for a teacher to find out what it is and take it away." 
 
 We all need outside help. A part of the training of 
 our will is to put ourselves under the control of those we 
 know will insist on our doing right when we have not the 
 strength do it ourselves. We ought to seek out the peo- 
 ple who rouse our best aspirations, and to surround our- 
 selves with those objects which nourish our highest 
 moods. By and by we shall learn to do without them if 
 we must. 
 
 And there is, I believe, infinite help for all of us. If 
 our whole soul is set on the right, we shall be so in har- 
 mony with the universe that everything — sorrow as well 
 as joy — will help us to do right. 
 
 Let us begin, if we have not already begim, to culti- 
 vate our will so that we shall be serene in the midst either 
 of happy excitement or of annoyance, courageous when we 
 see a hard duty before us, and active in doing our duty. 
 
XVI. 
 
 JUSTICE AND TRUTH. 
 
 THE best girls are prone to be unjust. Indeed, it is 
 hardly too much to say that injustice is the beset- 
 ting sin of the majority of good girls. Girls whose as- 
 pirations are the highest, whose wills are so disciplined 
 that they do not hesitate a moment before any hard 
 duty, who are full of love to God and man, fail here. 
 This is partly because their feelings are strong, and 
 mislead them ; but I believe the great difficulty is that 
 they have not learned to think. 
 
 The mental training that forms the judgment is thus 
 of direct moral value. I have no doubt that every one 
 would admit that a thoroughly educated woman is usually 
 a just woman, and a warm-hearted woman who has 
 learned how to be just is the very flower of womanhood. 
 A girl who has been taught accomplishments merely, 
 though she may be very charming and lovable, often 
 lacks the deep foundations on which a noble characiber 
 must be reared. 
 
1/2 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 I have already given a chapter to the intellectual side 
 of the question, and have suggested some of the means 
 of learning to think. 
 
 Now one great reason why we must learn to think is 
 that we may be just. A girl may wonder what good it 
 can do her to detect a fallacy in geometry, or to make a 
 correct translation of a Latin poem, or to weigh the evi- 
 dence for and against a scientific theory or a historical 
 fact ; but every exercise of this kind helps to form such 
 a habit of just thought that it will probably become 
 harder and harder for her to join in careless gossip about 
 an acquaintance. She will not be likely to condemn 
 anybody easily on hearsay, but will always wish first to 
 hear the other side. 
 
 Fortunately for the dull girls, who find geometry and 
 Latin and science beyond them, these are not the only 
 subjects that train us to think justly. The most stupid 
 girl can make a moral stand when she hears a bit of 
 scandal. She may insist on suspending her judgment 
 till she knows the tnith. 
 
 To think justly we must strive to know the whole 
 truth about a subject ; to act justly we need only know 
 that part of the tmth which would influence our action. 
 
 Mr. Clapp, the Shakspeare critic, says in one of his 
 inspiring lectures on Macbeth that women in an emer- 
 gency shut their eyes and act, refusing to see the tmth ; 
 while men keep their eyes open, but set their teeth and 
 
JUSTICE AND TRUTH. 173 
 
 go on. Now, if we shut our eyes merely because we 
 are not brave enough to do wrong without pretending it 
 is right, we are abject creatures ; but if we shut them 
 because we are determined that a sight of the danger 
 shall not keep us from doing right, we hold ourselves to 
 the highest justice. Our path, perhaps, is a narrow one 
 between two precipices. We know there is a terrible 
 abyss on each side. But there is no mistake about the 
 path. Let us not weaken our powers by looking down at 
 the horrors below, but fix our eyes on the sunlit summit 
 to which the pathway leads. Many a girl finds her lot cast 
 in a family where some member outrages all her sense of 
 right. She fears perhaps even more than she knows. 
 It would seldom be her duty to watch for facts to 
 confirm her suspicions. Let her believe the best she 
 possibly can about the wayward one, and love and cher- 
 ish and honour all the good she sees, and if she is not 
 self-righteous, she will be pretty sure to find a great 
 deal of good even in one she must often condemn. 
 Judgment here is not her duty. The only care she 
 need have is not to lower her own standard. She has 
 her own good life to lead, and it will not help her to 
 think about the faults of anybody else. Moreover the 
 less she thinks about these, the more likely she will be 
 to help in amending them. 
 
 Take these lines of Mrs. Browning to illustrate my 
 meaning : — 
 
174 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 " She never found fault with you, never implied 
 Your wrong by her right ; and yet n\en at her side 
 Grew nobler, girls purer, as through the whole town 
 The children were gladder that pulled at her gown. 
 
 My Kate!" 
 
 The mother of a family, however, must be willing to 
 open her eyes to the faults of her children, because the 
 knowledge will influence her in training them. 
 
 Or suppose a girl has to decide the question of mar- 
 riage. It will not do for her to ignore her lover's faults. 
 Suppose she suspects he drinks, or is dishonest in busi- 
 ness, or leads an impure life, she would do very wrong 
 to marry him without satisfying herself on these points. 
 Even if she decides to marry him after her eyes are 
 open, her attitude toward him must always be different 
 in consequence of her knowledge. She can no longer 
 hope that the two can develop side by side ; and though 
 her deliberate object may be to raise her husband to her 
 own level, she must always anxiously guard herself from 
 falling to his. 
 
 I hope this makes my meaning clear in saying that 
 *' to act justly we need only know that part of the 
 truth which would influence our action." If a girl fears 
 that her father drinks, he is still her father, to be treated 
 with all the love and honour she can give him ; but if 
 her lover drinks, her chances of saving him are greater 
 before marriage than after. Knowledge in this case 
 changes her duty. 
 
JUSTICE AND TRUTH. 175 
 
 Justice and truth are two sides of the same virtue. I 
 do not believe that any of my readers ever intentionally 
 tell a lie. I know that some girls do so, but they are not 
 the girls who are interested in self-culture. Still, most 
 of us are not perfectly truthful. Let us not deceive 
 ourselves by thinking that we are, for then we shall never 
 give ourselves the chance to improve. 
 
 We have different temptations, and they do not assail 
 us in the form we have prepared for ; accordingly, we 
 yield before we quite know what we are doing. Is there 
 one among us all who does not blush to think of some- 
 thing she has done which she had not thought it possible 
 for her to do? Even those of us who have reached 
 middle age and who have striven all our lives to resist 
 temptation seldom can look back many weeks without 
 feeling ashamed of some insincere deed or word. 
 
 I once knew a high-minded girl of good intellect who 
 was too ambitious. Her geometry teacher put a great 
 strain upon her pupils by giving them a book to study 
 which contained full proofs of the propositions, but for- 
 bidding them to read a word beyond the statements. 
 It required special care to look at the figure and not see 
 something more. " Oh, dear," sighed one of the class, 
 " when we say the Lord's prayer in concert in the morn- 
 ing, and come to the passage < Lead us not into temp- 
 tation,' I always think of the geometry lesson." Well, 
 this temptation was too much for our heroine. She could 
 
176 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 not always prove the propositions for herself, and she 
 could not bear to admit that she could not. She was 
 a truthful girl, but after working herself nervous over a 
 difficult theorem, she did sometimes let her eye wander 
 down the page till she saw some enlightening reference. 
 She tried to still her conscience by saying to herself that 
 she did not really read the proof. So she won honours in 
 her examination and went triumphantly on her course. But 
 her heart was sore. Time passed on. She was about to 
 graduate, and she could look back on four years of as 
 fine work as had been done by any girl in school. At 
 last, however, she could bear her trouble no longer. She 
 went to her teacher and told the whole truth, feeling that 
 if she were publicly expelled from the class, it would be 
 better than to live with her fault unacknowledged. The 
 punishment given her was that in the stress and hurry of 
 commencement preparations she was obliged to take a 
 wholly new geometry and work through every proposition 
 in it for herself. To get the time for this, she had to 
 relinquish her part in the commencement programme. 
 
 I think such a confession showed strong moral power. 
 I tell this story for two reasons, — to suggest that he 
 " who thinketh he standeth " still has need to " cake 
 heed lest he fall," and that when we clearly admit that 
 we have done wrong, we may — 
 
 " rise on stepping stones 
 Of [ourl dead selves to higher things." 
 
JUSTICE AND TRUTH. 177 
 
 If ihis young school-girl had said to herself, '' I did 
 not tell a lie, I never do tell lies, I dare say other girls 
 in the class looked at the proofs," and had so excused 
 herself, she would have done what many of us do ; and 
 by refusing to own that there was a blemish on the 
 whiteness of her beautiful character, she would have be- 
 come incapable of washing away the stain. She might 
 have forgotten her fault and have enjoyed her class re- 
 unions and the cordial welcome which her teachers gave 
 her when she revisited her Alma Mater; but who would 
 not choose the suffering for the sake of her victory? 
 
 I think all ambitious girls have a kindred temptation, 
 though I do not mean that it often presents itself in just 
 this form. But some of you are silently aware, if you 
 are honest with yourselves, that you like to appear a 
 little wiser, a litde more learned, than you really are. 
 
 We all conceal our defects of all kinds as much as 
 we can, and we have a right to do this. It would be 
 an injury to others as well as ourselves if we went 
 about proclaiming our shortcomings. It is not a very 
 good plan to talk much about ourselves even to our 
 dearest friends. But there is a faint line dividing the 
 reserve of self-control which leads us to try quietly to 
 correct our faults instead of talking about them, and 
 the reserve we practise for the sake of making others 
 believe we are better than we are. No one but our- 
 selves can decide where this line lies ; but if we aspire 
 
 12 
 
178 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 to be truthful, we must take heed that we never go be- 
 yond it. 
 
 Another temptation to untruthfulness which besets 
 many women comes from the desire to attract others. 
 This is strongest in some of the loveliest characters, for 
 a gracious woman who has tact can so easily say some- 
 thing very sweet, yet not altogether untrue, which flat- 
 ters her hearer, and reacts in making the speaker 
 beloved and admired. Tact is a dangerous gift. Here, 
 too, the dividing line between right and wrong is very 
 faint. Bluntness is not necessarily truthful any more 
 than flattery is. Every large-hearted, loving woman does 
 really see a thousand good and delightful qualities in 
 those about her which the careless pass by unheeded. 
 Her deep sympathy, too, often shows her that the need 
 for recognition is very real to many, indeed to most of 
 us, however firmly we may seem to stand alone, and she 
 longs to give it. 
 
 " Hast thou . . . 
 . . . loved so well a high behaviour 
 In man or maid that thou from speech refrained ^** 
 
 Those who live in this spirit are noble men and women. 
 I often think of the words of a friend, " The best people 
 are those we should n't be wilHng to let hear us praise 
 them." And yet most of us cannot be our best without 
 the warm nourishment of some genuine praise. Now, 
 when the time comes for a woman — or a girl — to speak 
 
JUSTICE AND TRUTH. 179 
 
 an appreciative word to one in need, how shall she be 
 sure to say just enough and not too much? For one 
 thing, she must be careful to tell the truth; and for 
 another thing, she must keep her own longing for an 
 appreciative word in return sternly in the background. 
 Love begets love and appreciation appreciation ; but any- 
 thing like a mutual admiration society is nauseating, and 
 any interview which seems likely to end in that way must 
 come to a peremptory close. 
 
 Sometimes our heart so overflows with love and admir- 
 ation of another that we cannot help speaking. It is not 
 that the one to whom we speak needs our words, but that 
 our gratitude for the blessing which comes to us out of 
 the fulness of the life of our friend must have reUef in 
 expression. It is right for us to speak. But how doubly 
 wrong it would be for us ever to simulate such a feeling ! 
 How wrong to exaggerate the germs of such a feeling ! 
 
 In questions of truth, there is danger of losing sight 
 of moral perspective, to use a phrase of Dr. James 
 Freeman Clarke. I remember a young lady who was so 
 morbidly conscientious in the matter of speaking the 
 truth that one night when a sick friend with whom she 
 was watching asked her what time it was, she could not 
 be contented till she had consulted several clocks, as well 
 as her own watch, which she feared was not quite right, 
 and then she said hesitatingly, "It is about five — no. 
 
l80 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 six — minutes past twelve!" Of course she wearied 
 and annoyed the invaUd, and though she was a truthful 
 young lady, I do not think she was necessarily thoroughly 
 truthful in feeling and action. I believe the chances are 
 against her. No one can distort the conscience like that 
 and still keep the balance which perfect justice requires. 
 It is not the girls who exaggerate absurdly in their 
 picturesque conversation who really misrepresent the 
 truth, but those who lay on just enough of the false 
 colouring to make us suppose that the colours are true. 
 When Sam Weller talks about " double million magnifying 
 glasses of hextra power," we do not feel any need of cor- 
 recting his language in the interests of truth, even though 
 we may hold the opinion that hyperbole is a figure of 
 speech which must enter sparingly into elegant diction." 
 
 Perhaps I have said too much of our temptations to 
 falsehood and not much to help a girl to cultivate truth- 
 fulness. Of course it is first necessary to understand our 
 aim, and then if our will is disciplined, we shall be able 
 to move steadily in the right direction. But I will make 
 one or two suggestions. First, let us avoid temptation 
 as far as we can. If a girl is tempted to look into her 
 book while reciting a lesson, she must leave it in her 
 desk. If she knows that her kind words to her friends 
 are usually overkind it would be a good plan to avoid all 
 personal conversation for a while. 
 
JUSTICE AND TRUTH. l8l 
 
 Second, we can often help others in a negative way by 
 avoiding embarrassing questions. All of us have affairs 
 and even opinions which we have a perfect right to con- 
 ceal; but if anybody asks us a direct question about 
 them, we are often in a cruel dilemma. We cannot tell 
 a lie, and we cannot tell the truth. If we show any 
 hesitation or say boldly that we do not wish to answer, 
 that is often in itself a complete answer. A truthful 
 woman — that is one who is truthful all the way through 
 — loves truth in others as well as in herself, and she can 
 often give efficient aid to her friends by abstaining from 
 a question she wishes to ask. If it is about some deli- 
 cate matter which she thinks her friend wishes encour- 
 agement to confide to her she can easily make it clear 
 that she would be glad of the confidence without putting 
 a direct question. 
 
 These suggestions are slight; but the girls who are 
 determined to be thoroughly truthful will have no diffi- 
 culty in making others for themselves, and each one 
 probably knows her own needs best. 
 
XVII. 
 
 A SPIRIT OF LOVE. 
 
 NOTHING is so great as love. We must have a 
 loving spirit. But how can we make ourselves love 
 anybody ; and who cares for forced love ? I cannot give 
 much help here, but if I withheld the little I can give, 
 I should feel that the rest of my words were as sounding 
 brass and a tinkling cymbal. 
 
 ** Mamma says I must be sincere," said a fine young 
 girl, " and when I ask her whether I shall say to certain 
 people, * Good-morning, I am not very glad to see you,' 
 she says, ' My dear, you must be glad to see them, and 
 then there will be no trouble.' " 
 
 One thing is sure. We must realize that the spirit of 
 love is essential to us, or we shall spend our strength on 
 things not essential. I once knew a child who had no 
 mark for absence or tardiness during a whole year at 
 school. The energy and perseverance she showed in 
 earning such a record are praiseworthy. But there was 
 one day in the year when her brother was to set out on 
 a long and dangerous journey. There was reason to 
 
A SPIRIT OF LOVE. 1 83 
 
 think he might never come back. The child was full of 
 grief at the parting, and yet she believed she ought to 
 give up the last precious hours with him and go to school. 
 It was heroic, but did she not put a false emphasis on 
 punctuality ? She did not understand that love is greater 
 than punctuality. Every other day in the year she had 
 been right, but this day I believe she was wrong. 
 
 When we once realize the need of a loving heart, what 
 can we do to nourish it ? At least we must learn to be 
 unselfish. As long as we think of ourselves and act for 
 ourselves, love cannot have a luxuriant growth in us. 
 Unselfishness is the key to this whole subject, and we 
 learn it not from books, but by living. 
 
 I remember a young lady who died long ago whose 
 heart seemed to overflow with love to everybody in the 
 world. Yet she had two or three strong antipathies ; she 
 did not indulge herself in these, but set herself at work 
 to overcome them. She was a teacher, and among her 
 scholars was a young girl so wanting in tact that she made 
 herself disagreeable to everybody. The teacher owned 
 that she could hardly bear to speak to her even in the 
 class ; but when she had owned it, she became aware 
 that she was wrong, and she determined to change her 
 feeling. She began by making a distinct effort every day 
 to do some kindness to her pupil. She would not shrink 
 from her any longer, but took special pains to meet her 
 and talk with her. Much sooner than she had expected 
 
1 84 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF- CULTURE. 
 
 she found herself really caring for her protegee. The 
 girl had many good traits, though they did not appear on 
 the surface ; but as soon as the teacher began to know 
 her, they were evident. Of course the pupil became 
 more passionately attached to her teacher than to any 
 one else in the world, so that as a reward of her kindness 
 the teacher was forced to be more kind, for the pupil 
 followed her footsteps everywhere. Yet the teacher did 
 not flinch. She even took the girl's cold, clammy hand 
 — which she had once said, with a shudder, made her feel 
 as if she had grasped a fish — in her own warm one, 
 and seemed glad to give something of her own vitality to 
 the forlorn young creature. 
 
 I do not know whether such a victory would be possi- 
 ble to all of us even if we had the courage and patience 
 to fight with our prejudices so bravely. This teacher 
 was deeply religious. She had a positive beHef in the 
 power of God to lift us above ourselves, and she defi- 
 nitely prayed for help in her struggle. She did really 
 win, for she truly loved the girl who had so repelled her. 
 
 This is the strongest case of the kind that ever came 
 to my personal knowledge. I think most of us are con- 
 tented to drift along with our i)rcjudices, and that we 
 hardly try to conquer them. But if we could once be 
 roused to believe that we ought to fight this battle and 
 that we must win it, I am inclined to think that we 
 could. There is — 
 
A SPIRIT OF LOVE. l8S 
 
 " The possible angel that underlies 
 The passing phase of the meanest thing." 
 
 It is probably true that everybody has some good and 
 lovable traits of character. At all events did any one 
 ever sincerely try to find something good in another 
 without succeeding? It is the ** possible angel" we 
 must look for, and there is probably no way of finding 
 it so quickly as by active kindness. 
 
 We need also to be kind in word and thought. All 
 gossip about others' faults is unprofitable. Among the 
 ignorant, it shows a vacant mind. There is even a worse 
 form of it among the intellectual, — that of saying witty 
 things of the foibles of our neighbors. Everybody has 
 faults; but it is seldom indeed that it is necessary to 
 mention them, and it would be humiHating if we had 
 nothing better to think about. The habit of saying and 
 thinking the best that is true of all our acquaintances 
 would change our attitude toward the world. Who of 
 us does not fail here? 
 
 But who cares to be loved from a sense of duty? It 
 is very well to try to love other people, but do we want 
 them to try to love us ? If we resent that, it is all the 
 more necessary for us to be so lovable that nobody can 
 help loving us. 
 
 What is it to be lovable ? 
 
 I know a handsome, healthy boy who plays foot-ball 
 with a will, swims like a fish, and rides like an Indian. I 
 
1 86 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 have never known him to come into a room which he 
 did not brighten by his presence. His radiant smile 
 seems to kindle an answering flash on every countenance. 
 His clear laugh puts everybody in good spirits ; he likes 
 to do kind acts ; he is always preparing some delightful 
 surprise for somebody ; he is at leisure when his mother 
 wants an errand done, and thinks it only fun to run a 
 mile for a spool of thread ; he is absolutely without 
 self-consciousness ; he is lovable, and everybody adores 
 him. Here health and vigour supplement an unselfish 
 heart. The moral I draw from him is that if we wish to 
 be lovable, we should first be unselfish, and second, do 
 our best to be well. We shall not all succeed in being 
 as charming as he is ; but we may have a degree of suc- 
 cess, and at least we shall make others happier, whether 
 we win their regard or not. 
 
 I know a lovable young girl who is very poor. She is 
 upright and industrious and sensitive ; but she is also so 
 loving and grateful that everj'body likes to help her. 
 The most commonplace kindness makes her beam with 
 delight. She loves everybody and thinks everybody is ac- 
 tuated by the noblest motives. She wishes she could help 
 others. As a matter of fact, she always gives more than 
 she receives, though her gifts are intangible, and neither 
 she nor her friends recognize them as gifts. But she 
 clears the atmosphere wherever she goes. Haughty 
 young women who snub half their associates unbend to 
 
A SPIRIT OF LOVE. 1 8/ 
 
 her. It is so impossible for her to conceive that any 
 one can be capable of snubbing her, that she gives a 
 warm greeting to these stately belles, and they thaw be- 
 fore they have time to remember their dignity. I do 
 not mean that she ever forces herself upon anybody. She 
 is peculiarly thoughtful in such ways ; but when she does 
 meet any one, her instincts are so generous and noble 
 that she does not stop for the moment of suspicion 
 which wrecks so many good but self-conscious girls, be- 
 fore her glorious smile shines out and her eager voice 
 speaks a welcome. If she had a million dollars she 
 would greet a poor girl in that way, and she simply can- 
 not conceive that all the girls who have a million do not 
 feel as she does. 
 
 The vitality of her temperament no doubt adds to her 
 charm. If her blood were more sluggish, she might 
 pause for the one fatal moment, and after she had seen 
 the cool face before her clearly it would be too late to 
 smile. And yet these proud young girls who are contri- 
 buting to her education (and feel themselves much 
 puffed up by their charitable deeds) love the sweetness 
 of that smile, and go away glowing with the sense of their 
 own graciousness. They are glad that she makes them so 
 gracious, and they love her. Well, we cannot make our 
 own temperament; but if we sometimes remembered 
 what it is to be lovable, we might occasionally find out 
 the way. If we cannot do this, we must not resent the 
 
1 88 CHATS WITH GH<LS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 endeavours of other people to love us from a sense of 
 duty. But need we resent them ? Do we not really 
 wish that others would look for the good in us instead of 
 magnifying the bad? After all, I do not believe we are 
 likely to quarrel with any one who tries to cultivate the 
 spirit of love, even if the effort has to be directed toward 
 ourselves. We should object no doubt to any conde- 
 scension ; but those who are sincerely trying to be large- 
 hearted have not much time to think of their own 
 superiority, and so they cannot condescend. 
 
 At all events, we can love others, and that is even 
 better than to be loved by them, though we do not be- 
 lieve it. Even in the case of the love between men and 
 women, the same thing is tme, though it is not my 
 duty to speak of it. There is nothing finer in all 
 George Eliot's novels than what she says of Will Ladis- 
 law's love for Dorothea. His supreme happiness came 
 from the perception that here was a creature worthy 
 of being perfectly loved. I think if girls always kept 
 that standard of love before them, there would be fewer 
 silly love-affairs, and fewer miserable marriages. Per- 
 haps there would be fewer marriages of any kind, but 
 those that did take place would bring a deej^er happiness. 
 
 Do we love even those we love best with full measure ? 
 We depend on them, and enjoy them, and cannot endure 
 their loss ; but all that may fall short of love. It is pos- 
 sible to cling very closely to our friend in a weak and 
 
A SPIRIT OF LOVE. 1 89 
 
 selfish way. It is an overfiowing heart which gives as 
 freely as it takes. 
 
 Can we not enter more completely into the lives of 
 those dear to us? Can we not prune our own selfish 
 fancies so that instead of demanding everything from our 
 friends, we may give without stint to them? 
 
 There is a peril in an intellectual life. It is easy to be 
 so absorbed in study that we forget to live. Educated 
 women are more just than the ignorant, and, on the 
 whole, they love quite as well, though more wisely. In- 
 deed, I remember once hearing a thoughtful woman say, 
 " I have noticed that none of the intellectual women I 
 know are as famous as they promised to be, and the 
 reason is that they always sacrifice their intellect to their 
 
 family." 
 
 In spite of this verdict, some of us must be conscious 
 that even when we are ready to make sacrifices on a 
 large scale, we do allow ourselves to be so occupied with 
 books and thought that we have no space to expand with 
 a warm, fresh life, which would be a far greater blessing 
 to our friends than many of our weary sacrifices. We 
 easily wear out in the search for knowledge, and even in 
 trying to do our duty our strength fails us ; but there is 
 a quickening principle in love which restores our powers. 
 
 It takes time to love. It is true that love is not 
 bounded by time. Our hearts may be swelling with love 
 while we are doing the most trivial things. The little 
 
igO CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 girl, to whom time seems unlimited, who begs to make a 
 pudding to surprise papa at dinner, is alive with love to 
 her very finger-tips even while she is beating the eggs 
 and mixing the butter and sugar ; and the young lady 
 who is taking lessons at the cooking-school to fit herself 
 to add comfort to the life of the young man she has just 
 become engaged to, will work over her recipes with an 
 ardour which transfigures them to poems. No doubt 
 there is many an overburdened mother, who has not a 
 minute to herself from sunrise to sunset, whose drudgery 
 is happiness, because it is a means of expression of the 
 love within her for those who are to wear the clothes she 
 makes and to live in the rooms she sweeps. Whenever 
 we are doing mechanical work, even when it is not done 
 for those we love, our thoughts are free, and we may 
 give them to our friends, though it is not true that all 
 hand-workers do thus employ themselves. But with in- 
 tellectual work it is different. To study, we must not 
 only be alone and silent, but we must be absorbed in 
 what we are doing. Even if the aim of our work is 
 the good of others, we cannot think of them while we 
 are doing it ; and if we work hard, we become more and 
 more involved in our studies and perhaps less and less 
 able to shake off their yoke. 
 
 There was once a woman who had occasion to sup- 
 port several invalid relatives. She loved them, but their 
 personal care did not fall upon her. She could however 
 
A SPIRIT OF LOVE. IQ^ 
 
 earn a large salary as a teacher, and she cheerfully de- 
 voted this to their needs. But she could not hold her 
 fine position without arduous study. Every moment was 
 crowded. One day she was on her way to take a lesson 
 from a distinguished professor when a dirty little boy 
 begged for some money to buy food. She shook her 
 head hastily and hurried on. There were several reasons 
 for doing this : the authorities of the city had earnestly 
 requested that no alms should be given on the street ; 
 she was in a great hurry, and it would have delayed her 
 to investigate the story and see that the child was placed 
 under proper care ; and her purse was almost empty. 
 When she had gone about a block farther, she suddenly 
 stopped. It flashed across her mind that the boy might 
 really be suffering ; that it might have been in her power 
 not only to help him at the moment, but to find out 
 something about him, and so place him where his whole 
 life might be the better in consequence. She knew how 
 improbable all this was, still it was possible, and she felt 
 that the responsibility was hers. She looked back, but 
 the boy had disappeared. She thought that she ought 
 not to have refused such an appeal from a child mechani- 
 cally. If he were an impostor at that age, it was all the 
 more necessary that some one should look after him ; 
 if not, poor as she was, she could spare a few cents 
 for him. Her time was more precious even than her 
 money ; but she could have stopped five minutes, and 
 
192 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 if she had still been in doubt as to his truthfulness, 
 she could have bought some rolls for him and superin- 
 tended his eating them. She bitterly regretted that 
 absorption in her own thoughts had led her to form 
 the habit of doing mechanically what she should have 
 done intelligently, though the pressure in her life came 
 almost wholly from her acknowledgment of the claims 
 of others. 
 
 She told me that she had little fear for the boy. She 
 thought she should have refused the money in the end ; 
 but she could not get over the shock of finding that 
 callous spot in her character. 
 
 When we are absorbed in thought petty interruptions 
 are almost unendurable, and none of us can be too care- 
 ful not to disturb others in this way ; but every time we 
 suffer ourselves to give way to irritation when we are 
 interrupted, it is an admission that thought is more to us 
 than life, and that intellect is more than love. I do not 
 mean, of course, that we should allow many interruptions 
 from children and others whom it is our duty to train in 
 habits of thoughtfulness ; but that where we have no such 
 duty or right, there can hardly be better discipline for 
 us than the constant remembrance that nothing we are 
 trying to learn can be worth quite so much as the power 
 to enter sweetly into the little needs and wishes of 
 others. 
 
A SPIRIT OF LOVE. 193 
 
 The distribution of our time has a more far-reaching 
 influence in cultivating the spirit of love than we at first 
 think. No one who is free to choose should plan to fill 
 the whole day with rigid occupations. There are few 
 who can afford five hours of solid study. Yet some are 
 so placed that they usually have that time to spare, and 
 they may fall into the habit of employing it in study. In 
 such a case, it would be a good plan to arrange regular 
 work for four hours, and then lay aside some interesting 
 book that could be snatched up at odd moments to be 
 read in the remaining hour. Then if a whole hour 
 should be wasted in interruptions, the main work of each 
 day would go on easily. So, if we usually have an hour 
 to study we may make the last quarter of it elastic. 
 
 We want plenty of time for the larger interruptions of 
 life, to have real conversation with our real friends as 
 well as a pleasant word for a new acquaintance, to write 
 letters that tell something of what we are thinking to 
 those we used to love but who are drifting away from 
 us because life presses so on all sides. Those who can 
 choose must never let their friends go even when the 
 margin of choice is narrow. A woman who earns her 
 living has a struggle to decide whether she will give her 
 litde leisure to study or to her friends. If some of 
 her friends will study with her, it may be the solution 
 of the question, though the best study requires silence 
 and solitude ; and she need not make many new friends. 
 
 13 
 
194 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 But if she takes all her leisure for study her heart will 
 wither within her. 
 
 When I say that we must be generous in giving our 
 time to others if we ever hope that love in us may grow 
 to be a vigorous plant, I do not mean that we should 
 give time to gossip. I know sisters and friends who 
 spend most of their time together in reading aloud to 
 save themselves from talking over other people ad nau- 
 seam. It is as bad to give too much time to our friends 
 as too little. Interchange of thought and experience 
 and life is good ; but when the conversation begins to 
 grow weak, it is time for silence, and perhaps it is time 
 to be alone. In the distribution of time, one reason 
 that we must give a part of it to mental culture is that 
 we may have something to say worth saying when the 
 time comes to speak. 
 
 There can never be fine culture of any kind while we 
 are in a hurry. We have a right to be busy — indeed if 
 we are strong and well, every moment of our day may 
 be filled to the brim ; but for that very reason, because 
 we wish to enjoy the full richness of every moment, we 
 cannot afford to hurry over it to the next. 
 
 Quiet and leisure to think over and enjoy our books, our 
 music, and our pictures is necessary before they really be- 
 come part of ourselves. Unless our culture is thoroughly 
 assimilated, it is not culture at all. It is a good thing to 
 
A SPIRIT OF LOVE. I95 
 
 look at the sky once a day if we can do no more, but 
 we want whole days in the open air, when we feel — 
 
 " Oh, what have I to do with time ? 
 For this the day was made." 
 
 But hurry soils the heart even more than the intellect. 
 We may win a fact for use even when pushing along post- 
 haste ; but if we love our friends, we must be wilhng to 
 linger over the thought of them, and we certainly ought 
 not to be too busy to be glad to see them. 
 
 Sympathy is an essential part of love. I have long 
 thought that true sympathy was an intellectual quality. 
 The very best of sympathy is perhaps independent of 
 the intellect, for a child or even an animal may show 
 that it suffers with you, simply because it loves you. But 
 while we welcome the sympathy of a child who cannot 
 understand our trouble, most of us are irritated by the 
 incompetent pity of older people who ought to compre- 
 hend our position, but who get no further than to be 
 sorry for our suffering whether we are right or wrong. I 
 know that some of the most sympathetic people are far 
 from being learned, — indeed there is always danger 
 that learning will choke the growth of sympathy; but 
 it is by using the powers of thought, memory, and imagi- 
 nation in entering into the trials and problems of other 
 people that we are finally able to put ourselves in their 
 places and feel intelligently for them. Then, as we are 
 
196 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 not blinded by personal feeling, we may often see the 
 right course more clearly than our suffering friend, and 
 be able to give the wise and firm support needed at this 
 crisis. 
 
 Intellectual sympathy with all about her, it seems to 
 me, is one of the highest aims a girl who desires self- 
 culture can set before herself. Here is a worthy object 
 to occupy the strongest mind. It is when an intellectual 
 girl spends herself on lower studies altogether that she 
 becomes a pedant. 
 
 Sympathy with all about her, I have said. Can we 
 love everybody? Do we not weaken ourselves in the 
 attempt to love everybody ? Can there be any enthusi- 
 asm in love that is divided among so many people ? Can 
 we love anybody very rapturously when we love so many? 
 In answer, I will say that among the women I know — 
 and I dare say the same is true of men — those who 
 have shown the most intense love for a few friends are 
 also those who have given the largest measure of gener- 
 ous affection to everybody they have come in contact 
 with, from the servant in the kitchen to the fellow-trav- 
 eller of a day whom they are never to see again. 
 
 Dante tells us again and again that love is the one 
 thing that is inexhaustible. The more we love the more 
 we can love. The more that we are loved, the more we 
 can love in return, for " he that loveth is born of God," 
 and has a part in what is infinite. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 THE CHOICE OF COMPANIONS. 
 
 IT is fatal to growth to confine ourselves to one set 
 of companions, even if they are good and intellect- 
 ual and refined. The world is large, and no one circle 
 absorbs all the goodness and intellect and refinement 
 within the reach of its members, if they are only willing 
 to step sometimes beyond its boundary. A new stand- 
 point shows us new virtues even in our particular 
 friends. But the worst effect of exclusiveness is that at 
 last we come to believe that our centre is the centre 
 of the universe. The exclusive spirit does not belong 
 to aristocrats alone, I wonder if there is one among 
 us so free from it as to be qualified to cast the first 
 stone. The Boston servants who cannot think of taking 
 a situation except on the Back Bay usually require more 
 credentials from a new acquaintance than their mis- 
 tresses do. We all know plenty of religious people who 
 will have nothing to do with the worldly, plenty of in- 
 tellectual people who take pride in avoiding society, and 
 farmers who look down upon the city boarders quite as 
 much as the city boarders look down upon them. 
 
198 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 Nevertheless, the choice of our companions has an 
 overwhelming effect on our culture, and especially with 
 those of us who are more influenced by persons than 
 by books. 
 
 For instance, none of us can afford to mingle with 
 coarse people until our own refinement is assured. 
 When we reach that point, the coarseness will repel 
 us; but we may be able to see good and attractive 
 traits in coarse people, and while our superior refine- 
 ment may help them, their goodness may help us still 
 more. 
 
 With little children, it is right to take great care that 
 they should have only the best companions. Until 
 they have judgment enough to decide what is good and 
 what is bad in those about them, it is dangerous for 
 them to come in contact with the bad at all; though 
 on the other hand, if they are kept entirely apart from 
 others, they can hardly be saved from selfishness, — which 
 is worse than the vices they escape. A mother often 
 has to choose between two evils for her child ; but at 
 least she should always make sure that its care is given 
 only to a good and trustworthy person. 
 
 When a girl is old enough to choose her own friends, 
 
 how shall she choose ? She is generally guided by her 
 
 likes and dislikes. She says with the girl in the ballad, — 
 
 " The reason why I cannot tell ; 
 I only know and know full well, 
 I do not like you, Dr. Fell." 
 
THE CHOICE OF COMPANIONS. I99 
 
 I have never been able to find fault with this principle, 
 though I hope most giris are not drawn together, as 
 some are, simply because their sleeves are cut alike. 
 Even if we all looked about and selected the most 
 suitable person we know for a companion, and decided 
 to love her best, do you think we should succeed? 
 The fact that we are attracted by one rather than an- 
 other does usually mean that that one in some way 
 belongs to us. 
 
 The better we are ourselves, the more likely we are 
 to love the good. But then, suppose we are not very 
 good, and we are conscious that our friends hinder in- 
 stead of help us? What are we to do if we are 
 aware that we are very easily led by those about us? 
 This is a hard question, but one which every girl must 
 answer. 
 
 I do not believe any girl is so unfortunate as not to find 
 that there is at least one among her friends who helps 
 her. Let her cling to that one, if to no other. Or if 
 there is one among them whom she knows she helps, 
 she must be sure to cling to that one. 
 
 But what can be done about the friends that hinder? 
 Is n't it rather selfish, just for the sake of our own im- 
 provement, to cast off those who love us ? That is the 
 way many generous girls feel, though they may not like 
 to say so to their parents or their teachers, who beg them 
 to be more careful of their associates. 
 
200 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 It would be a fine thing if we could determine not to 
 be hindered ; if instead of that, we could help the friend 
 who is now hindering us. Sometimes that is possible. 
 Suppose we have already chosen our friend and cannot 
 give her up, even if we want to do so, without causing 
 her pain. We are in no such dilemma about books. We 
 can give up the trash we have been reading without 
 hurting anybody. We can fortify ourselves with the 
 best of companions in books. As we improve, if there 
 is anything genuine in our friendship, our friend will per- 
 haps improve with us. If she does not, the bond between 
 us will grow weaker and gradually disappear of itself. 
 
 But alas ! there are many very weak girls who have 
 not decision enough to try such a remedy. They would 
 be good girls if they had good friends; but with silly 
 companions they are very silly girls. I fear there is no 
 help for such except in obeying their wiser guardians. 
 Any girl who is conscious that one of her friends is lead- 
 ing her to do wrong or to have wrong thoughts, and who 
 knows she is not strong enough to lead instead of being 
 led, must humbly give up her companion. Suppose she 
 hurts her friend's feelings. It may rouse the one who is 
 hurt as nothing else could do. 
 
 Occasionally two girls at boarding-school who know 
 they are too weak to help each other will talk the matter 
 over and petition not to be allowed to room together, but 
 to be put with wiser room-mates. In the end they love 
 
THE CHOICE OF COMPANIONS. 201 
 
 each other all the better for the change which helps both 
 of them to be better worth loving. 
 
 But we do not by any means have complete choice in 
 the matter of companions. We cannot escape associa- 
 tion with a great many people whom we do not even 
 fancy. For this reason I feel like insisting all the more 
 on what I have said before, — that we must use all our 
 strength to rise above ourselves without the help of 
 others. We must be our best whether those about us 
 are their best or not. Perhaps we can help them up ; 
 at all events we must not let them drag us down. If we 
 are not first self-reliant, I am afraid we shall never be fit 
 to choose any companion. And we ought to choose, in 
 spite of all I have said about our right to be guided by 
 our natural likings ; and the more difficult it is to escape 
 from most of our associates, the more important it is to 
 choose well where we have any choice. 
 
 The one law is to choose the best. But who are the 
 best, — those who minister to us or those to whom we 
 can minister? 
 
 I know a woman who has always chosen well. She 
 has friends in all parts of the world and in all grades of 
 society. If I tell you something about them perhaps it 
 will make the whole subject clearer. 
 
 When she was a school-girl she was naturally attracted 
 to two or three of the best girls in her class, — one was 
 the best scholar, another the most high-minded, and 
 
202 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 another, though dull enough, was the neatest and sweet- 
 est of them all. She cared also for two of the teachers, — 
 one the oldest and wisest, the other the youngest and 
 freshest of the corps. She had two or three friends also 
 among the little girls whom she was able to help. She 
 was on good terms with almost everybody in school, and 
 never failed in courtesy and kindness ; but she did not 
 make sudden or intimate friendships. She talked freely 
 perhaps to one of the girls and to one of the teachers. 
 When she left school and went back to her home in the 
 city, she was at once surrounded by a large class of cul- 
 tivated people. She liked society, and went to parties 
 when she had time ; but the special friends she chose for 
 herself were not those who shone most in such assemblies. 
 One, to be sure, was a brilliant society woman, the most 
 accomplished and most beautifully dressed woman of the 
 circle, who could dance all night and be as fresh as a rose 
 in the morning, and whose wit and grace never failed- 
 Our heroine admired this woman as she admired all 
 things perfect of their kind ; but she never would have 
 made a friend of her if she had not seen in her a large, 
 full, unselfish nature, lifted above trivialities, even when 
 she was doing the most trivial things. 
 
 Another of her friends was a woman then studying 
 medicine, who afterwards became a physician with a 
 world-wide reputation ; another was a young society 
 fellow whose dominant interest in Ufe was music; 
 
THE CHOICE OF COMPANIONS. 203 
 
 another was a rich young lady who held the opinion that 
 a woman should support herself, and went daily to her 
 work in a counting-room. 
 
 In the meantime her interest in those outside her 
 circle was increasing. She had a few lessons in German 
 from a shy old professor very much out at the elbows, 
 who had such a power of inspiring her with high thoughts 
 that he became her life-long friend. She found that her 
 milliner was a cultivated woman, who when she went to 
 Paris, studied the pictures of the Louvre as much as she 
 did the fashions, and she made a friend of her. The 
 newsboy who delivered papers at the door proved to 
 have a real taste for the drama. She gave him substan- 
 tial help in his education ; but more than that, she was 
 his sympathetic friend, and in reading Shakspeare with 
 him she received as much help as she gave. 
 
 She boarded one summer in a fisherman's home on 
 one of those lonely islands along the coast of Maine, and 
 she found the fisherman's wife a true companion, a 
 woman not only of sweetness and integrity, but a thinker 
 without books, and one who saw and felt the glory of 
 the world without requiring an artist to point it out 
 to her. 
 
 At the South she came in contact with a negro woman 
 who had been a slave, and whose life had been full of 
 those terrible tragedies of which the simplest account 
 makes the blood run cold. This woman by force of 
 
204 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 character had won peace out of suffering, and had some- 
 thing to give to others well worth giving. 
 
 In Austria my friend met a charming woman in a rail- 
 way train, and the two proved to have so many points of 
 character and thought in common, that they formed a 
 permanent friendship. This new acquaintance turned 
 out to be a countess. 
 
 In Italy my friend found a young girl in a wretched 
 hovel, among ignorant peasants, who showed such natu- 
 ral powers that it seemed worth while to educate her. 
 My friend said she had never known greater refinement 
 of feeling or truer poise of character in any lady of the 
 land. 
 
 Now why did this one woman discover these remarka- 
 ble people everywhere ? The rest of us go through the 
 world and think our companions very commonplace. It 
 was because she had those qualities in herself that called 
 out a response from the best in others. 
 
 " The pedigree of honey 
 
 Does not concern the bee. 
 A clover any time to him 
 Is aristocracy." 
 
 She was a quiet, rather resen-ed woman, though she had 
 an easy grace in conversation which always pleased. She 
 cared deeply for beauty and delicacy, but she was abso- 
 lutely unworldly. Nothing attracted her which was 
 not genuine, and she had a nature large enough to 
 
THE CHOICE OF COMPANIONS. 205 
 
 perceive what was genuine even when it wore an uncouth 
 disguise. 
 
 We ought to choose the best companions. But is it 
 not clear that even the weakest girl cannot shield her- 
 self from responsibility by saying she is too easily led 
 by those she loves? We can never choose our friends 
 aright until we ourselves become worthy of worthy 
 friends. Oar friends do help us ; but we have no right 
 to require it of them, and no right to be a drag upon 
 them. We must learn to help ourselves, and then we 
 can in turn help others, and be fit to receive help from 
 them. 
 
 The lady I have been describing used to say, "The 
 happiest friendships are not those where we take every- 
 thing or give everything, but where we both give and 
 take.'' 
 
XIX. 
 
 THE MEANING OF OUR CULTURE TO 
 OTHERS. 
 
 HALF a century ago, the girls working in the Lowell 
 mills gave one of the finest examples ever seen 
 of "plain living and high thinking." At present a girl 
 who had to work in a factory from twelve years old to 
 twenty would feel herself defrauded of culture. But 
 these Lowell girls show them how little depends on 
 circumstances and how much on themselves. One of 
 these girls wore out Watts's " Improvement of the 
 Mind " by carrying it about in her working-dress pocket ; 
 others studied German in the evening, though their 
 hours of labour were from daylight till half past seven 
 at night ; they held Improvement Circles, and published 
 a magazine or two. They were high-minded and re- 
 fined, not afraid of drudger)', but determined to make 
 their way to something beyond it. Many of them loved 
 beauty and appreciated the sweep of the fair blue 
 Merrimac under the factory windows. In their homes, 
 with all the frugality, the atmosphere was fragrant with 
 peace and integrity. 
 
 No material help that can be given to a girl forced to 
 
MEANING OF OUR CULTURE TO OTHERS. 207 
 
 do hard work can equal such an example. Most of these 
 factory girls succeeded in their hopes. They earned 
 their education ; they became teachers, writers, artists ; 
 they often married men of wealth and standing, and 
 many of them now hold important positions in society. 
 Other women may give time and strength and money to 
 support a working-girls' club ; but these women can give 
 something far better. The girls only need to look at 
 them to see what working-girls may become, and they no 
 longer feel that they have any right to despair because 
 their conditions are hard. 
 
 Miss Lucy Larcom, in her exquisite "New England 
 Girlhood," by describing her own life in the Lowell mills 
 has made every reader feel how far-reaching is all genuine 
 culture, though perhaps she did this unconsciously. Her 
 frankness in speaking of this life puts work on a true and 
 dignified basis, and furnishes an ideal that must help 
 every girl who can be helped by anything. 
 
 I remember a delightful young teacher in a boarding- 
 school who had a love for beauty that was like a sixth 
 sense. It seemed as if every girl in school caught some 
 glow of the heavenly flame from her, though she simply 
 went her way unconscious of her influence. One morn- 
 ing she looked out of her third-story window and saw 
 the world wrapped in snow. The storm had ceased, but 
 the paths were yet unbroken. She thought of the beauty 
 of the woods that encircled the town, and it seemed to 
 
208 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 her necessary that everybody should see it. She said so 
 to the principal of the school when they met at break- 
 fast, and suggested that lessons should be given up for the 
 morning. The principal smiled thoughtfully. It had 
 not occurred to her that the lessons could be given up ; 
 but she was a woman of large mind, and she saw at once 
 that a sleigh-ride through those wonderful forest aisles 
 would do more to elevate the girls than anything they 
 could leam from books. A lovely pale light was break- 
 ing through the clouds and touching the arches of the 
 elms as the happy party set off. There was plenty of 
 fun during the morning, and yet this penetrating into the 
 beautiful mystery of the untouched sanctuary of the snow 
 was as a consecration to these light-hearted girls. They 
 came home quietly, and studied faithfully through the 
 short winter afternoon. And they never forgot the 
 vision. I do not suppose that the teacher had any 
 thought of doing good. She acted from the impulse of 
 a nature so in harmony with beauty that she felt instinct- 
 ively that the moment had come to look beyond books 
 at a revelation of the divine. Yet it would hardly be too 
 much to say that every girl in school was more sensitive 
 to beauty all her life for what many people would have 
 considered that unreasonable holiday. We must indeed 
 try to help others directly, and yet the best help of all 
 always comes to them not from what we do or say but 
 from what we arc. 
 
MEANING OF OUR CULTURE TO OTHERS. 209 
 
 " How will you endure life in that stupid little place? " 
 asked one young lady about to graduate from college of 
 a classmate whose family ties made it necessary for her 
 to settle down in a small village ; " you will not have one 
 companion of your own age." "Oh," said the other, 
 serenely, " I have plenty of old friends there, and it 
 would be a pity if my education was of no use to them. 
 I mean to start a reading-circle, and a natural history 
 club, and a class for art study, and one thing and 
 another." 
 
 "In other words, you mean to teach your acquaint- 
 ances," said her friend, rather scornfully. 
 
 " I '11 teach them what I can," replied the other, cheer- 
 fully. " Of course I ought to do that, after having had a 
 chance to learn ; but you don't realize how bright those 
 young people are 1 If we read Shakspeare together, for 
 instance, I shall know most of what the critics think, but 
 I dare say they will make more original suggestions than 
 I shall." 
 
 "Then you don't mean to do missionary work, after 
 all." 
 
 " No, indeed ; but I don't mean to rust out. I want 
 to enjoy myself and I want to go on with my education ; 
 and that is what the others want, too, though they have 
 not been so fortunate as I have. We shall help each 
 other." 
 
 It seems to me that this young lady was more generous 
 14 
 
210 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 than if she had definitely proposed to do missionary 
 work among her uncultivated friends, for she was more 
 humble and less self-conscious. No one can doubt that 
 her companions themselves would approve of her spirit, 
 or that she would accomplish more than if she had 
 looked down upon them from a height. 
 
 If we rise, we must take others with us, instead of shak- 
 ing ourselves loose from them. Otherwise there can 
 be no real elevation of character. Even intellectually 
 the contact with minds differently trained from our own 
 is an advantage. We discover what is real and what 
 is merely traditional in our culture. 
 
 In America, at least, there are always to be found 
 two or three people in every country town far more 
 highly cultivated than the rest. It is sometimes rather 
 hard for them to overlook the differences between 
 themselves and those around them. They are shocked 
 at the want of refinement they see everywhere. They are 
 tired of village gossip. So they sigh for more con- 
 genial society. Now, while it is true that a friend or 
 two of their own degree of culture would be a means 
 of great happiness and refreshment to them, it is not 
 true that their lives may not be full of interest and in- 
 spiration. The people talk gossip because nothing else 
 is provided for them to talk about. Surely an edu- 
 cated woman ought to be clever enough to introduce 
 some higher subject of conversation which would not 
 
MEANING OF OUR CULTURE TO OTHERS. 211 
 
 be beyond the range of the company. If the young 
 graduate I have quoted carried out her plans, it is 
 easy to see that in her circle at least there would be 
 new topics for discussion, and every member of every 
 one of her clubs ought to be a new centre for healthful 
 development. Twenty families might easily get an im- 
 pulse from her unpretending resolution not to rust out. 
 
 As for refinement, that grows gradually by contact 
 with the refined. Now, suppose all the refined people 
 could shut themselves up in a beautiful garden hidden 
 from the rest of the world by a high fence, would it show 
 that they loved refinement, or simply that they loved 
 themselves? If they really loved refinement, I think 
 they would not be satisfied without scattering its seeds 
 far and wide. 
 
 So it is with the things of the intellect. What is their 
 charm for us? Ought it not to be the delight of con- 
 stantly finding out more and more of truth and beauty? 
 If it is so then how can we be contented without show- 
 ing the vision to everybody who is willing to look at it ? 
 If we alone have climbed to the hilltop whence we may 
 see the rising sun, how strange that we should waste a 
 moment in regretting that we are alone when we might 
 be cheerfully calling to those groping in the darkness 
 below to come up to us ! Suppose we should stand on 
 the summit, and instead of fixing our eyes on the sun- 
 rise, should look down in scorn on our old companions 
 
212 CHATS WITH GIRLS ON SELF-CULTURE. 
 
 at the base of the mountain. Suppose we spent our 
 time in admiring our own strength and swiftness, and 
 began to be jealous the moment we saw a fellow-traveller 
 approaching ! What would the sunrise be to us ? It is 
 not those who love the things of the intellect who fail to 
 love their neighbour, — it is those who love themselves. 
 In these days when we have so many opportunities to 
 take a broad glance at the world, when we are oppressed 
 and overwhelmed at the thought of the poverty and misery 
 of so many of our fellow-creatures, most educated girls 
 long to do something to raise the poor and ignorant. 
 They are ready, if need be, to live in the midst of the 
 slums in the hope of giving cheer to the suffering, and 
 of furnishing an ideal to the low. This is well. But all 
 cannot do the same work. Many a girl feels herself 
 stranded for a time at least among merely commonplace 
 people. Every one who cultivates herself finds herself 
 raised above some of her old associates. This is as true 
 of the rich as of the poor. Such a girl fancies she has 
 nothing in common with those about her, and that she 
 can do nothing for them. Both fancies are false. Prob- 
 ably her great opportunity has come to her, and she does 
 not see it. If she were not so certain of her superiority 
 to her companions, and would meet them simply, giving 
 them her best, or at least the best they would take, she 
 would soon see they were not so commonplace as she 
 had thought, and they would find themselves lifted above 
 
MEANING OF OUR CULTURE TO OTHERS. 213 
 
 their ordinary plane. Generally it will be found that 
 everybody is ready for our best, however they may slight 
 and deride our second best. 
 
 Our culture has a meaning to our dear friends, to those 
 whom we regard as our equals and most delightful com- 
 panions, and to those whom we love and reverence as 
 far above us. The touch of a friendly hand often holds 
 us on a high level when if our friend wavered, we should 
 sink with her. Often two girls find great enjoyment in 
 pursuing grand studies together when either alone would 
 drift with the current and fritter away the day in triviali- 
 ties. You can all think of some friend, no wiser in books 
 than you are, who has helped you unspeakably by her 
 fine ideals. And do you not also know some one you 
 count inferior — perhaps some child — who has forced 
 you to be your best by loving what is best in you ? Then 
 you can see how you too may help those you honour. 
 
 Self-culture is not selfish. It is a duty and it is a well- 
 spring of happiness within the heart. One who has 
 true culture is a radiant point from which beams of light 
 flow out, shedding a blessing on the world. 
 
 THE END.