ve to learn that
liberty, for reasonable beings, only means being free to forge your own
chains,--being free to make such rules as you know are necessary, if you
are to live a wholesome, health-giving life. Being late for prayers is
hardly a form of self-government which we should admire in the abstract,
though it is very tempting in practice; and keeping your mother waiting
for her breakfast, or else letting her have a solitary meal, is hardly a
good way of being that domestic sunbeam which schoolgirls are supposed to
have time to be,--in holidays!

Holidays are sometimes spent in incessant excursions with young friends,
leaving your mother at home to look after the little ones; and yet,
perhaps, your mother had a very dull time of it in term-time, when you
were either at work, and could not be spoken to, or were busy over school
gossip with some friend, and, perhaps, she looked forward to the holidays
as a time when she would get a little companionship from the daughter for
whom she makes so many sacrifices. But she is too unselfish to be the
least drag upon you; so she asks a school friend to stay with you, and,
somehow, always has a good reason for really wanting not to join the
expedition, and takes the younger ones off your hands with an air of its
being almost self-indulgence on her part to do it. But, all the same,
whatever she says, mothers like going about too, and, even if they do not,
they like to feel that their presence makes part of their daughter's
pleasure in the holiday pleasurings. You may think it very hard-hearted
and mistaken of me to suppose that you would be so selfish with your
mother, but I have, often and often, seen it done, and I feel like a
little boy I know, who can hardly speak yet, but who is evidently born to
be a general redresser of wrongs,--he is very quickly struck by any
instance of the folly and injustice of the world, and his favourite remark
is, "_Somebody_ ought to tell them; why shouldn't I?" Now, _somebody_
ought to say this about mothers, and the mothers who do the unselfish
things are the last people who will ever remind you that they, too, have
feelings, so I will usurp that little boy's office, and tell you myself,
for I am quite sure that, if it ever struck you, you would be shocked at
doing it, but,

"Evil is wrought by want of thought,
As well as want of heart."

However, I do not intend to make this my closing quotation, as I am sure
my children will have