Yet we must yield sensibly, and not allow our time to be needlessly wasted—­at all events, by brothers and sisters and friends.  It is different with a father or mother:  they are only lent to us for a part of our lives, and no memory of sensible, useful work will be to us the same pleasure in after years as the thought of the time that passed more pleasantly for a mother because we spent it in idle (!) talk, or the knowledge that a father had enjoyed the feeling that we were always at hand if he wanted us.  A strong-minded woman might consider matters differently, and feel that a language learnt, or a district visited, was of more value, but we shall not be able to reason so when we see life in the new light which death throws upon it; the little restrictions of home life will then assume a very different aspect.

Unless you are driven with an unusually loose rein, you will probably be irked by having to be punctual, and to account for your letters and for your goings and comings; but if you ever feel inclined to resent it, just think what it will be when you are left free—­free to be late because there is no one to wait dinner for you, free to come and go as you will because there is no one who cares whether you are tired or not; some of these days you will give anything to be once more so “fettered.”

Higher education often makes girls feel it waste of time to write notes for their mothers, and to settle the drawing-room flowers:  they “must go and read.”  Now, what mental result, what benefit to the world, will result from an ordinary woman’s reading, which can, in any way, be comparable to the value of a woman who diffuses a home-atmosphere, and is always “at leisure from herself”?  You know that I care very much for your reading—­you will have plenty to do if you read all the books I have begged you to study—­but if it gave your mother pleasure for you to be at the stupidest garden-party, I should think you were wasting your time terribly if you spent it over a book instead.  Some people think ordinary society, and small talk, beneath them:—­well! do not let the talk be smaller than you can help, but remember Goulburn’s warning, “Despise not little crosses, for they have been to many a saved soul an excellent discipline of humility.”

But to come at last to Solomon’s ideal—­what is our first impression of her?  Surely it is strength, and we probably feel her strong-minded, and rather a “managing woman”—­and, as a rule, these are not loved.  I feel that she wants some sorrow to humanize her—­she would hardly be sorry for less prosperous, less sensible people:  the modern feeling of, “the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it!” has never gone home to her; she is not like Ruskin’s “gentleman” who has tears always in his eyes, in spite of the smile on his lips; she is not “quick to perceive the want” in the many lives, which are empty or crippled, though, perhaps, seemingly prosperous:  things turn out well with her, and she deserves it,