indeterminate time is
not lost if it has been spent in preparatory training of mind, and
especially in giving some resistance to their pliant or wayward
characters. Thus, whether they devote themselves to the well-being of
their own families, or give themselves to volunteer work in any
department, social or particular, or advance in the direction of higher
studies, or receive any special call from God to dedicate their gifts to
His particular service, they will at least have something to give; their
education will have been "higher" in that it has raised them above the
dead level of mediocre character and will-power, which is only
responsive to the inclination or stimulus of the moment, but has no
definite plan of life. It may be that as far as exterior work goes, or
anything that has a name to it, no specified life-work will be offered
to many, but it is a pity if they regard their lives as a failure on
that account.

There are lives whose occupations could not be expressed in a formula,
yet they are precious to their surroundings and precious in themselves,
requiring more steady self-sacrifice than those which give the stimulus
of something definite to do. These need not feel themselves cut off from
what is highest in woman's education, if they realize that the mind has
a life in itself and makes its own existence there, not selfishly, but
indeed in a peculiarly selfless way, because it has nothing to show for
itself but some small round of unimpressive occupations; some perpetual
call upon its sympathies and devotion, not enough to fill a life, but
just enough to prevent it from turning to anything else. Then the higher
life has to be almost entirely within itself, and no one is there to see
the value of it all, least of all the one who lives it. There is no
stimulus, no success, no brilliancy; it is perhaps of all lives the
hardest to accept, yet what perfect workmanship it sometimes shows. Its
disappearance often reveals a whole tissue of indirect influences which
had gone forth from it; and who can tell how far this unregistered,
uncertificated higher education of a woman, without a degree and with an
exceedingly unassuming opinion of itself, may have extended. It is a
life hard to accept, difficult to put into words with any due proportion
to its worth, but good and beautiful to know, surely "rich in the sight
of God,"

CHAPTER XIV.

CONCLUSION.

"Far out the strange ships go:
Their broad sails fl