thing to think of and to
act on.

And when you are dressed (carefully and prettily dressed), and your soul
is dressed in God's armour, what are you going to do with the new day God
has given you?

First carry out some duty in the house; next see to your own improvement,
not as a self-ending pleasure, but in order to make yourself a useful
woman, to train you for better work in the future.

_Reading_ is not the only kind of such training, but it is one of the
best kinds and gives you new ideas. I advise you to try for half an hour a
day, and to keep a list of the books you read:[1] make an abstract of a
sensible book once in three months: sandwich your English novels with
foreign ones: keep a sensible book on hand and, alternately with books you
fancy, read something a little above you: take up some special subject
every three or six months and read several books on it, or else read
through the books on my lists: read no novels before luncheon.

It is seldom safe to fix the hour very decidedly; some one interrupts you,
and then you feel the rule broken and you get discouraged!

Make a point of being occupied, keep some needlework on hand, idleness
leads to silly thoughts and self-indulgence. Do not be out-of-doors all
day; have something indoors to show for yourself. Feminine occupations
have a good result on the character, and help you to be quiet and
recollected, to be the womanly woman who makes a real Home for her father
and brothers. As Roger Ascham is reported by Landor to have said to Lady
Jane Grey, "exercise that beauteous couple, the mind and body, much and
variously; but at home, at home, Jane! indoors, and about things indoors."

Mr. Lowell said that most men act as if they had sealed orders not to be
opened till middle life! I do not want you to waste your life like that, I
want you to feel that you have a definite purpose and that you know what
orders you ought to give yourselves, or rather what are God's orders for
your life.

What is your purpose in life? I hope--Lord Bacon's words in our Tuesday
midday Prayer express it--"the glory of God and the relief of man's
estate." You go into life knowing how dearly the Lord Jesus Christ loves
you, at how dear a cost He bought you; therefore, not just to save your
souls, not just because you would be _afraid_ to live carelessly, but,
because of His amazing love, you will try to live as He asks you to do.
God grant you such a sense of that amazing love that