essays of children in longer compositions. Imagination puts them in
sympathy with all the world, with things as well as persons, as
affection keeps them in touch with every detail of the home world. But
its work is not so simple. Home affection is true and is a law to
itself; if it is present it holds all the little child's world in a
right proportion, because all heavenly affection is bound up with it.
But the awakening and the rapid development of imagination as girls grow
up needs a great deal of guidance and training. Fancy may overgrow
itself, and take an undue predominance, so that life is tuned to the
pitch of imagination and not imagination to the pitch of life. It is
hardly possible and hardly to be desired that it should never overflow
the limits of perfect moderation; if it is to be controlled, there must
be something to control, in pruning there must be some strong shoots to
cut back, and in toning down there must be some over-gaudy colours to
subdue. It is better that there should be too much life than too little,
and better that criticism should find something vigorous enough to lay
hold of, rather than something which cannot be felt at all. This is the
time to teach children to begin their essays without preamble, by
something that they really want to say, and to finish them leaving
something still unsaid that they would like to have expressed, so as not
to pour out to the last drop their mind or their fancy on any subject.
This discipline of promptitude in beginning and restraint at the end
will tell for good upon the quality of their writing.

But the work of the imagination may also betray something unreal and
morbid--this is a more serious fault and means trouble coming. It
generally points to a want of focus in the mind; because self
predominates in the affections feeling and interest are self-centred.
Then the whole development of mind comes to a disappointing check--the
mental power remains on the level of unstable sixteen years old, and the
selfish side develops either emotionally or frivolously--according to
taste, faster than it can be controlled.

There are cross-roads at about sixteen in a girl's life. After two or
three troublesome years she is going to make her choice, not always
consciously and deliberately, but those who are alive to what is going
on may expect to hear about this time her speech from the throne,
announcing what the direction of her life is going to be. It is not
necessa