one point of view.

Instead of the term being, for children, a time of self-denial, and the
holidays, a time of well-earned self-indulgence,--I feel that term-time
means self-denial for the parents, and selfishness for the children. Do
not misunderstand me; the selfishness which I mean is forced upon you,--it
is your duty, in term-time, to put lessons first. It may very well be that
some of you feel you were wrongly selfish in your way of doing it,--that
you allowed school work and school interests to blind you to the helpful
things you might have done at home without any injury to the lessons. I
occasionally hear such things as, that school is "so bad for girls,
because So-and-so gets so engrossed with her work that she is irritable
when any demand is made on her time, and is deep in her books when any
demand is made on her sympathies; and when she is not studying, she and
her school friends are running in and out of each other's houses, so that
her mother might as well have no daughter at all." I do beg that none of
you will bring this discredit on school life, for the system gets blamed
when it is really your individual shortcoming which is in fault; you ought
to be big enough to hold both school and home interests! But, setting
aside this form of term-time selfishness, which we shall all agree to
condemn, there remains another form of it, which is a duty. You must put
lessons first, or you will be wasting both your parents' money and that
leisure for self-improvement, which, as a rule, is only granted to us
while we are young. You are not free, yet, to be as useful at home as you
would like to be; your mother has to do without a daughter, to a large
extent, or to avail herself of one with the uncomfortable feeling that the
daughter is losing valuable time thereby, and probably is considering
herself a martyr in having to do unscholastic duties. I dare say the
daughter feels, "It isn't to please myself that I slave at my lessons;
mother would be vexed if I didn't; and it's very hard that I should be
both hindered in them and made to do other things as well,--it's quite bad
enough in term-time to have to fag at lessons." But just consider, for a
moment, this "fagging at lessons:" _you_ feel that in so doing you are
making a concession to your mother, for which she ought to show unbounded
gratitude by all manner of sweetmeats in the holidays. But who profits by
these lessons,--your mother, who denies herself many a smal