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

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

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

Too often the girl, who by dint of conscientious struggles keeps up real study, gets out of touch with her surroundings, and sees the stream of family confidences, and affections, and appeals for help and sympathy flowing towards the easy-going sister, who makes no struggles of any kind.  Your great wish is to be a true woman, “with continual comfort in her face.”  Are your books, and your self-discipline, and your time-table, only a hindrance to this?  Must you starve either head or heart?  Why cannot you seem outwardly at leisure, and yet live an inner life of thought and work?  It needs self-denial, forethought, economy of time, and that most Christian grace of tact; but these are all attainable, all part of that Wisdom which “orders all things sweetly and strongly,” and which is the rightful heritage of every true woman.  Let no delusion about amiability induce you to leave off reading and study, only be very discreet as to how and when you do it.