You have duties in the holidays as well as in school time.  It is wrong to spend two months in self-indulgence without any self-discipline.  You must open your eyes to your duties,—­practising, sensible reading, tidiness, and daily unselfishness.

It may be no one’s business to remind you in the holidays, and your mother may let you alone a good deal, from wishing you to have “a good time;” but you alter very considerably during two months, and it is your part to see that you alter for the better.

Two months means two Communions with definite resolves, two definite upward stages in life.  If you let yourself go till you get back to the crutches of school, you will have gone two very definite stages downhill.

Some of you are tidy here, but at home your temptation is to plaster some neatly folded garment or sash over the recesses of an untidy drawer, or to use anything that comes to hand, any racquet, or croquet-mallet, or oil-can, or thimble; your own cannot be found—­you take the nearest and then leave that also lying about.

Do you think these things do not matter?  You would think it mattered very much if you grew up an unreliable, unconscientious woman, and yet, I do not know in what lesson-book you can learn to be thorough and reliable and conscientious, except in the daily lesson-book of these trifles.

You each know that daily practise is a duty, if your mother wishes you to learn music.  A daily duty neglected, or a daily duty done, means a very considerable difference in the person by the end of two months.

There are one or two further points in your holiday and grown-up life which I should like to talk about to-day.

Visits.—­Enrich your life with them, instead of letting them be times when you slip back morally.  Take your conscience with you (but do not wear it outside), and be very careful to keep your rules, your prayers, your home standard of right and wrong, your quietness and self-control.  Do not “let yourself go,” and do silly things for fun.  A great many leave their sense of responsibility at home, whereas our visits are part of the regular course of that life for which God will judge us.  And keep your mind open, get new ideas, read the books in the house, instead of taking a store with you.

Next consider your duty in the choice of people you live with.  First, there are your relations.  You say you cannot choose these; no, but you can choose which side of them you will draw out.  Every one is a magnet; some attract the worried, irritable side of other people, some the serene, pleasant side.  If you try to see the bright side of things and to agree instead of differing, and if you say nice things about people when they are out of the room, your family circle will show themselves very different from what they might be if you were a magnet for unpleasantness!