things which we hear talked of. Some of you may not have
this advantage; your people may be too busy for talking about books and
such things, and some of you may be cut off from interesting talks by
having school lessons to prepare when you would like to listen. Therefore,
I should like you to get some talk in school on such subjects--to spend
some "Half-hours with the best Authors."

Holidays.

"Where shall we spend the holidays?" has doubtless been discussed in many
households, by both parents and children,--I wonder if the children
followed it up by a still more important question, "_How_ shall I spend
the holidays?" Just at the close of a term you will not want me to suggest
anything that is like lessons, but at the same time I do not see why you
should spend seven weeks in idleness and novel-reading, any more than you
would live for seven weeks on puddings and sweets. You like plenty of
sweets, and I hope you will get them, but I hope you will have meat as
well!

There are many books which are not novels, and which you would yet
enjoy,--books which would send you back more thoughtful; and though you
might not know any one lesson better next term because of having read
them, yet you would be a step nearer to being the sort of women you would
like to be. I dare say when you go for your holiday you will get something
to read at the station bookstall. Now, several of the books I mean can be
got there, as easily as yellow novels, and can be got for the price of
_Punch_; they are so small you could have them in your pocket and get them
read in odds and ends of time, out-of-doors, so that you need not miss any
expedition, or any fresh air, through staying in the house to study. In
the same way you could get some really good poem for a penny, and learn it
by heart. Nothing would please me so much as if you all brought me next
term the name of some book you had read, of this kind, and repeated to me
a poem of the sort that you think I should like--which very likely is not
the sort _you_ like, as yet. It would do you good, whether you enjoyed it
or not, for you would be teaching yourselves to like the better kind of
books if you persevered with it, and your holidays would be pleasanter, as
well as better, if there was some effort of this kind to give backbone to
each day. Cooks say there should be a pinch of salt in everything you eat,
and I am sure we ought to have a pinch of the moral salt of self-conquest
in ea