e well through middle life. At sixteen we
had to look after other people, but they shirk responsibility, till women
of thirty are content to be like birds of the air, just amusing
themselves, and feeling no call to be of any serious use."

I said, "Well, _I_ do not like to see even a girl of eighteen with no
_raison d'etre_, 'living like a prize animal!'"

Why were you born? God thought about you, and took trouble about you, and
has something you can do for Him. To exist beautifully is not enough! Have
you definite duties, which you stick to even though they bore you, _e.g._,
house duties, or reading aloud, or lessons with the younger ones? If not,
find some!

Marcus Aurelius counted each day lost in which he could not at night look
back on something he had done for others.

Jeremy Taylor, in the "Golden Grove," says:--"Suppose every day to be a
day of business: for your whole life is a race and a battle; a
merchandise, a journey. Every day propounds to yourself a rosary or
chaplet of works, to present to God at night."

I have given you three pieces of advice--

I.--Vote on the right side in conversation.
II.--Show that you love your mother.
III.--Put salt into every day.

I would end with one more. I take it from Saint Simon, that clever
on-looker at the Court of Louis XIV. whose memoirs are famous. His morning
greeting to himself was--

_"Get up, M. le Comte! you have great things to do to-day."_

You will all of you go out to lives that you _can_ make empty and
self-indulgent and narrow if you like; you _can_ shirk duties and eat
capriciously or intemperately, and lie in bed too long; you _can_ idle
about all day amusing yourself, and fill your mind with dress and gossip
and spite;--perhaps you would feel there was "no harm" in such a life!

_No harm!_ I would rather hear you were dead than that you lived a life
like that!

On the other hand, every day of your life you _can_ make the wings of your
soul grow by an honest bit of self-denial, by an honest bit of work for
others, by an honest bit of mental work.

Every day you can be _more worth having_; there is not one of you here who
has not the power to make herself--and to _pray_ herself--into a noble,
dutiful woman.

_"Get up, M. le Comte! you have great things to do to-day."_

[Footnote 3: Gray's Letters to W. Mann.]

A Friday Lesson.

Our course of lessons for this term brings us to-day to Jephthah's story;
to decide o