The influences which determine these early steps are, first, the natural habit of mind, for thoughtful children see most interesting and strange things in their surroundings; secondly, the tone of their ordinary conversation, but especially a disposition that is unselfish and affectionate.  Warm-hearted children who are gifted with sympathy have an intuition of what will give pleasure, and that is one of the great secrets of letter-writing.  But the letters they write will always depend in a great measure on the letters they receive, and a family gift for letter-writing is generally the outcome of a happy home-life in which all the members are of interest to each other and their doings of importance.

What sympathy gives to letter-writing, imagination gives to the first essays of children in longer compositions.  Imagination puts them in sympathy with all the world, with things as well as persons, as affection keeps them in touch with every detail of the home world.  But its work is not so simple.  Home affection is true and is a law to itself; if it is present it holds all the little child’s world in a right proportion, because all heavenly affection is bound up with it.  But the awakening and the rapid development of imagination as girls grow up needs a great deal of guidance and training.  Fancy may overgrow itself, and take an undue predominance, so that life is tuned to the pitch of imagination and not imagination to the pitch of life.  It is hardly possible and hardly to be desired that it should never overflow the limits of perfect moderation; if it is to be controlled, there must be something to control, in pruning there must be some strong shoots to cut back, and in toning down there must be some over-gaudy colours to subdue.  It is better that there should be too much life than too little, and better that criticism should find something vigorous enough to lay hold of, rather than something which cannot be felt at all.  This is the time to teach children to begin their essays without preamble, by something that they really want to say, and to finish them leaving something still unsaid that they would like to have expressed, so as not to pour out to the last drop their mind or their fancy on any subject.  This discipline of promptitude in beginning and restraint at the end will tell for good upon the quality of their writing.

But the work of the imagination may also betray something unreal and morbid—­this is a more serious fault and means trouble coming.  It generally points to a want of focus in the mind; because self predominates in the affections feeling and interest are self-centred.  Then the whole development of mind comes to a disappointing check—­the mental power remains on the level of unstable sixteen years old, and the selfish side develops either emotionally or frivolously—­according to taste, faster than it can be controlled.