o
reads, and one who does not read. Two ladies may be of the same age.
They may dress alike. They may have the same advantages of person. They
may move in the same social circle. Yet you will not have been ten
minutes in their society, though the conversation has been on only the
most common topics of the day, before you will feel that the one woman,
though at thirty or forty, is still only a superannuated school-girl,
with even less resources than when she left the seminary, while the
other is a delightful companion for persons of any age, with ready
knowledge for whatever turn the conversation may take, and so abounding
in resources as not even to be open to the temptation of making a
display of them. The one can talk only so long as the conversation turns
on dress, gossip, or the discussion of private character. In listening
to the talk of such a woman, you hardly hear a sentence which is not
based upon personalities. Her mind has not been fed and nurtured from
day to day with beautiful and noble thoughts, with history and science
and general knowledge. She may be amiable. She may have personal
beauty. But you find her empty and vapid, and you weary of her, in spite
of the very best intentions of being interested. How different the woman
who, in spite of social exactions, and even of accumulating domestic
duties, and of the time-consuming tax of dress, still keeps her mind
fresh and growing, by means of reading and culture,--who is ever adding
to her stores of knowledge some new science, to her varied skill some
new attainment,--who has ever in hand some new book. It is true, indeed,
that some ladies are blessed with more leisure for this purpose than
others. But I fear it is not a question of more and less. It is too much
a question of some and _none_. I hold that every woman is entitled to
have, and by proper determination she may have, _some_ time for personal
improvement. Remember, we have duties to ourselves, as well as to
others, and we have no duty to ourselves more sacred than this,--to
rescue from our time some portion for the purpose of making ourselves
more worthy of regard.

To undertake to suggest what particular studies you should pursue, in
this larger school to which you are now admitted, would lead me into a
train of remark entirely too extended. One single practical suggestion
may perhaps be pardoned. Do not willingly relinquish the acquisitions
already made. They are to you the true foundations for