e. The girl who distinguishes herself in the tennis is
thought a good public-spirited member, and so she is,--she helps the
school and shows _esprit de corps_,--but, to my mind, the girl who fags
well at the match, and gets small thanks and no credit, shows even more
_esprit de corps_ than the one who has the excitement of distinguishing
both herself and the school.

The clever girl who wins prizes and scholarships, helps our school to
shine, and no one applauds her more than I do, but in my heart, I feel
that the school owes even more to the dull plodding girl, who knows she
cannot do much, but who determines to give her very best to the school,
and to be worthy of it by giving no scamped work. Perhaps she gets low
marks, perhaps she is told she ought to do better,--and quite rightly,
because we want her to rise to give really good work, and are not
satisfied till she does; but whether it is good or not, if it is her
_best_, she has fought a good battle for the school, and has "helped to
maintain the high standard of duty which was founded in the school by its
first and beloved head-mistress--Ada Benson."

Rough Notes of a Lesson.

I hope to start a new lesson for some of you, and I have gathered you all
here to-day, whether you will be able to come to it or not, because, in
thinking over what I wished to say about this one lesson, I found I was
led into describing what I should like all lessons to do for you. My new
lesson will be a talk on various things in which you are, or ought to be,
interested. I have tried this plan before, and have sometimes been laughed
at for having such miscellaneous lessons, but I found their effect very
good. I had a spare half-hour in the week, which I gave to this Talking
Lesson.

Once I took Dante, and after a sketch of his life and of Florence, we went
through the "Inferno;" I read the famous parts in full and told the story
of the rest, and now many of those children who listened feel, when they
come on anything about Dante, as if they had met an old friend.

Then I happened to go to Yorkshire and saw several of its lovely abbeys:
I came back with a craze for architecture, so I and the girls did that
together. Neither they, nor I, imagine that we understand architecture, or
are authorities on it; but though we only took the barest outline, it made
us all use our eyes and enjoy old buildings. I often get letters from
those girls, saying that they have since enjoyed their t