l swing of home amusements, and so
you come away for a sort of mental retreat, during which it will be easier
to you to let your bookish and thoughtful side grow. Here you are, and
your home amusements are left behind. Would it not be a pity to let your
mind keep running on the very things from which you have come away? Do not
let your tongue or your mind run on the amusements of home--they prevent
your taking real interest in your work.

Also there should be no talk about religious differences. Of course, you
all come from different homes and have somewhat different teaching, and I
do not wish you ever to discuss those differences. Every one should keep
to her home ways, and try to live up to them. Religious controversy never
yet made any into better Christians, and it generally makes them worse!

Avoid Religious gossip about the services and the clergy. Make it a rule
for yourself, wherever you are, never to criticize the clergyman or the
sermon. Very likely you might say something to the point--it might do him
good if he heard it! That will not happen, and what _will_ happen is, that
you will do yourself harm by being critical or amused, instead of making
your mind devout. If your "mind" knows that, whatever it may notice in
church, your "will" is not going to allow it to speak of, then your
critical part goes to sleep. A joke loses its amusingness if one is not
going to tell it, and you are then able to think only of your Prayers and
Resolutions.

Purity and Reverence are the two main things in talk, but how about Sense?

There is one class of girl I have sometimes noticed with amused regret--I
dare say you have too--though she is by no means so objectionable as the
other kind I spoke of. She is a would-be child of nature. She has no
thoughtfulness or weight about her; she is an engaging kitten who exists
on the rather inadequate stock-in-trade of nice eyes; she is quite
irresponsible and useless, and tells you so, in an ingenuous way, for
which her nearest and dearest long to box her ears! I would call her "The
Artless Japanese," remembering the princess in the _Mikado_, who says, "I
sit and wonder, in my artless Japanese way, why I am so charming."

Again, very often a girl of your age gets a good deal of society in the
holidays or before she comes. She comes to school on purpose to keep away
from that, till the right time for it comes (when I hope she will have
plenty of it!)

Now, when a girl is not much ac