with the household, only she should resolve on something and stick to it.
You need not be disobliging, since you can always make time by denying
yourself.

Secondly, have a standard in talk. You cannot tell your elders when you
think them wrong, but you should not join in, when your contemporaries say
what you think wrong. Speak out then, or at least be silent and
unresponsive.

Thirdly, do something for other people, some steady kindness which you do
not give up just to suit your own convenience.

Now, what plan of life should you have? You must have a plan and
resolution, for if you drift you are almost certain to drift _down_ and
not up.

Yet you are quite rightly looking forward to a time of freedom. But
freedom means being able to command yourself, it does not mean being free
to drift without a helm.

Also you will be under control to a certain extent. Very likely you will
sometimes resent control or reproof at home more than you would resent it
from an outsider! But you are a stage nearer that sad freedom of later
life when it is nobody's business to look after you, and you have now got
to learn how to use wisely that fuller freedom of later life.

I hope you have been learning at school to use the comparative freedom of
"being out." I hope that, with both men and girls, you will remember what
I tell you here about not being silly and uncontrolled, or loud and
boisterous. The actual school rules pass away, but there is not one of
them that is not founded on some principle that I hope you will carry with
you and live by.

The books, the music, the pictures in which you are interested here are
not mere lessons to be shut up joyfully when you leave! They are the great
interests and amusements of the friends whom you most value, and it would
be very disappointing if you did not use your free time in making
opportunities to carry them on better than at school, for you come here
mainly to find out what interesting things there are in the world you are
going into.

But to go to practical details. Take a girl who wants to be good and
dutiful and useful, to be a comfort at home, to keep her brain in good
working order, and to enjoy herself: what should she resolve upon if she
is to be of use in the world and not drift idly along? She must think it
out for herself, and no longer wait for orders. She must put the salt of
self-denial and effort into every day, of her own accord, and not feel
absolved because her m