Are you ready for real work?  Can you take criticism or contradiction with a perfectly unruffled face and voice?  Do you overcome your hindrances to usefulness at home, e.g. do you improve your handwriting so that your mother need not be ashamed to let you write for her?  Do you help her tactfully and consentingly—­the only help which rests people—­or do you argue each point, so that it is far less trouble to do the thing twice over than to ask you?  Are you prompt and alert in your movements, or do you indulge in that exasperating slowness, which some girls seem to consider quite a charm?  Do you wait till the last minute, and then leisurely put on your things, with serene unconsciousness of the fret it is to every one’s temper?  If you want to see how unthoroughbred such a habit looks, read “Shirley,” and study the character of Mr. Donne, the curate, who flatters himself that he enhances his importance by keeping the others waiting while he complacently finishes his tea.

Do you lay down the law.  Do you allow yourself the tone of positive, almost dictatorial, assertion, which, coming from a girl, so sets an old-fashioned person’s teeth on edge; or do you try to speak in the tentative, suggestive, inquiring tone, which is not only required by good manners, but is also a real help to humility of mind?

Do not say that these things are too simple and obvious to bear on your future work for the Relief of Man’s Estate,—­on Work with a big W. They are of the very essence of the formation of character, and your Work for others stands or falls by that.

The sanctifying influence of home-life lies mainly in its necessity, its obviousness,—­in the fact of our remaining unprofitable servants after we have done our best.  It is the school in which we are placed by God; we are bound to learn its lessons, and do its duties:  there is no halo of self-sacrifice around it—­the position rightly viewed gives us no choice.  “I must,”—­there is the sting, the irksomeness to us.  We can submit cheerfully to our self-chosen Pope, and seem most sweet-tempered in bearing criticism and in doing tiresome duties,—­the “I must” is not there.  This wilful obedience is worth just nothing as discipline of character, compared with obedience to our lawful authorities; “Ay, there’s the rub!”

Is not this very necessity in home life—­this “I must”—­just the thing which makes it akin to our Lord’s life?  Is there not in that Holiest Life a continual undercurrent of “I must”?  His earthly life was a course of obedience, not a succession of self-willed efforts; its keynote was, “Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?”

Esprit de Corps.

While I was away, I was present at a discussion on Esprit de Corps, and whether it was a good thing in girls’ schools.  What is esprit de corps?—­The feeling that we are one of a large body of which we are proud.  A soldier has it when he is proud of his regiment and is proud of belonging to it.