I did not write this article for the purpose of saying what I hold to be the bounden duty of every father and mother in the land; viz., to educate the daughter as they educate the son, to some practical, bread-winning pursuit.  That should be the rule, and not the exception.  A girl should be trained so that with either head or hands, as artist or artisan, in some way or other, she will be able to go into the world’s market with something for which the world, being shrewd and knowing what it wants, will pay in cash.  Rich or poor, the American father who fails to give his daughter this special training is a short-sighted and cruel man.

My thought was rather of the girls themselves.  Some of them will read this.  So will some of their mothers-Mothers and daughters often, not invariably, are so truly en rapport that their mutual comprehension is without a flaw.  There are homes in which, with the profoundest regard and the truest tenderness on both sides, they do not understand each other.  The mother either sees the daughter’s discontent, recognizes and resents it, or fails to see it, would laugh at its possibility, and pity the sentimentalist who imagined it.  And there are dear, blooming, merry-hearted, clear-eyed young women who are as gay and as elastic as bird on bough or flower in field.

To discontented girls I would say, there is for you one panacea—­Work; and there is one refuge—­Christ.  Have you been told this before?  Do you say that you can find no work worth the doing?  Believe me, if not in your own home, you need go no further than your own set, your own street, your own town, to discover it waiting for you.  No one else can do it so well.  Perhaps no one else can do it at all.  The girl can not be unhappy who, without reserve and with full surrender, consecrates herself to Christ, for then will she have work enough.—­MARGARET E. SANGSTER.

    God giveth his beloved rest through action
      Which reacheth for the dream of joy on earth;
    Inertness brings the heart no satisfaction,
      But condemnation and the sense of dearth.

    And shall the dream of life, the quenchless yearning
      For something which is yet beyond control,
    The flame within the breast forever burning,
      Not leap to action and exalt the soul?—­

    Surmount all barriers to brave endeavor,
      Make for itself a way where it would go,
    And flash the crown of ecstacy forever,
      Which only laborers with God may know?

    In action there is joy which is no fiction,
      The hope of something as in faith begun,
    God’s sweet and everlasting benediction,
      The flush of victory and labor done!

    Labor puts on the livery of greatness,
      While genius idle withers from the sight,
    And in its triumph takes no note of lateness,
      For time exists not in Eternal Light.