it, and it were well that she remembered and taught her
daughters to remember, that real neatness includes the unseen as well as
the seen. Neatness has a moral significance not to be despised, for
though it is true that the dress is an index of the character, and that
external neatness habitually covering untidy underclothing, is only
typical of some moral unsoundness, it is equally true that there is an
influence in the other direction, from the external, inwards. The habit
of neatness furnishes soil in which the tree of self-respect may begin
its growth. Do we not all know that a child behaves better in clean
clothes than in soiled ones? And has there not been a perceptible
elevation in the real character of the city police since they were
dressed in neat uniforms? I know that the fact that they are in
_uniform_ touches another point, and yet it is not all. If instead of
setting the beggar on horseback, we clothe him in clean and neat
garments, we all know that we have given him an impulse in the direction
of the good.

Obedience is perhaps the next habit to be spoken of. Unquestioning
obedience we must demand from the child for her own safety. It may often
be a question of life and death whether the little girl runs when she is
called, or throws away something which she has in her hand, instead of
putting it into her mouth. But has not this habit of obedience a higher
office than this? It is the first yielding of the untrained will to
rightful authority, and as such, has an immense significance. The mother
who cannot train her daughters and sons to obedience were better
childless, for she is but giving to her country elements of weakness,
not elements of strength. She is furnishing future inmates for jails,
penitentiaries, and prisons, and putting arms into the hands of the
enemies of law and order. And yet, how can a woman who has no clear
ideas herself of what should be demanded and enforced, and hardly a
sufficient command of language to express directions clearly, who was
never taught herself to obey, and who has no definite idea of what end
she really wishes to attain, educate her children into obedience? A
sense of exact justice, a persistent attention, and a consistent thought
are necessary. Has the education which we have been giving our girls
tended to develop these? Are they not "developed only by mental work in
those very directions which have scarcely heretofore formed a part of
the education of our girls