education helps to do some of these things.

Education increases your interest in everything; in art, in history, in
politics, in literature, in novels, in scenery, in character, in travel,
in your relation to friends, to servants, to everybody. And it is
_interest_ in these things that is the never-failing charm in a
companion. Who could bear to live with a thoroughly uneducated woman?--a
country milkmaid, for instance, or an uneducated milliner's girl. She
would bore one to death in a week. Now, just so far as girls of your
class approach to the type of the milkmaid or the milliner, so far they
are sure to be eventually mere gossips and bores to friends, family, and
acquaintance, in spite of amiabilities of all sorts. Many-sided and
ever-growing interests, a life and aims capable of expansion--the fruits
of a trained and active mind--are the durable charms and wholesome
influences in all society. These are among the results of a really
liberal education. Education does something to overcome the prejudices
of mere ignorance. Of all sorts of massive, impenetrable obstacles, the
most hopeless and immovable is the prejudice of a thoroughly ignorant
and narrow-minded woman of a certain social position. It forms a solid
wall which bars all progress. Argument, authority, proof, experience
avail nought. And remember, that the prejudices of ignorance are
responsible for far more evils in this world than ill-nature or even
vice. Ill-nature and vice are not very common, at any rate in the rank
of ladies; they are discountenanced by society; but the prejudices of
ignorance--I am sure you wish me to tell you the truth--these are not
rare.

Think, moreover, for a moment how much the cultivated intelligence of a
few does to render the society in which we move more enjoyable: how it
converts "the random and officious sociabilities of society" into a
quickening and enjoyable intercourse and stimulus: everybody can recall
instances of such a happy result of education. This can only be done by
educated women. How much more might be done if there were more of them!

And think, too, how enormously a great increase of trained intelligence
in our own class--among such as you will be in a few years--would
increase the power of dealing with great social questions. All sorts of
work is brought to a standstill for want of trained intelligence. It is
not good will, it is not enthusiasm, it is not money that is wanted for
all sorts of work; i