training far more than she does are
doing the work. To every girl will come the opportunity right along for
"managing"; club and social work will bring it, and a good-sized family
will bring it as nothing else can. But school leisure she will not have
again. The whole aim of the school is to enrich the lives of its
students, and it knows all too well that that student who does not keep
for herself the leisure upon which body and mind and soul must feed is
indeed poor.

There is one way in which leisure is very generally misspent in
school--and alas, outside, too!--not in managing one's own affairs, but
in managing and discussing the affairs of others. At such times the
remarks may be superlatively pleasant, but they are more often
superlatively disagreeable. It may be said with truthfulness that they
are almost never moderate or just. Everything is all black or all white,
with no gray. It makes one think of the little girl with a curl in the
middle of her forehead:

"When she was good, she was very, very good,
And when she was bad, she was horrid."

But, alas! the poor wretches discussed are not allowed even the natural
and somewhat happy human alternation between badness and goodness. No,
indeed, they are monsters of a desperate character--they may at the
moment be broken-heartedly conscious of their own faults--or they are
shining six-winged angels. And, woe! this sort of thing comes almost as
hard upon the angels. They can't endure it; so much goodness breaks down
their wing arches, and the glorious ones crumple together like
tissue-paper.

And upon the girls busily engaged in creating angels of loveliness and
gargoyles of ugliness, this sort of conversation works havoc. It does
not invigorate them, it does not inspire them. It belittles their
minds--thank fortune, that making kindling wood of the characters of
other people does do this!--and stunts their finer feelings. This sin,
that they "do by two and two," they pay for one by one. Gentle and
considerate feelings are lost, time is wasted, a vicious habit,--almost
no habit is more vicious,--is acquired. Such gossip can never become a
pure enjoyment; it remains at the best an ignoble, discreditable
excitement. Rolling these sweet morsels under their tongues, a taste for
ill-natured or exaggerated comment fixes itself in their mouths. Even if
they have consciences that, like good mothers, will occasionally wash
their mouths out with soap, they retain th