onsidered besides your necessities. Fond as I am of you, I
have the betterment of humanity at my heart, too, and cannot feel it is
right for you to place yourself in a position where you will not be
doing the best for those dependent upon you that could be done.

I have given up hope of seeing mothers made to realize their
responsibilities. But I still have hope of the teachers. On them and
their full understanding of all it is in their power to do, lies the
hope of the world.

Therefore, my dear girl, I urge you to take up dressmaking or millinery
instead of school-teaching.

If you ruin a piece of goods in the making, you can replace it and
profit by your error. But if you mar a child's nature in your attempt to
teach him, you have done an irreparable injury not only to him but to
humanity.

If you saw a design started by a lace-maker, you would not think of
taking the work and attempting to complete it until you had learned the
art of lace-making.

Just so you ought not to think of developing the wonderful intricacies
of a child's mind until you have learned how.

It is all right to deliberately choose a vocation which gives us contact
only with inanimate things, but we have no right to take the handling of
human souls unless we are specially fitted for the task.

To Clarence St. Claire

_Regarding His Sister's Betrothal_

Your request, my dear Clarence, that I try to influence your sister to
change her determination in this matter, calls for some very plain
statements from me.

I have known you and Elise since you were playing with marbles and
rattles, and your mother and I have been very good acquaintances
(scarcely intimate enough to be called friends) for more than a score of
years. You are very much like your mother, both in exterior appearance
and in mind. Elise is the image of her father at the time he captured
your mother's romantic fancy, and as I recollect him when he died.

You were five years old, Elise three, at that time. Your mother lived
with your father six years in months, an eternity in experience. You
know that she was unhappy, and that he disillusioned her with love, and
almost with life. He married your mother solely for her fortune. She was
a sweet and beautiful girl, of excellent family, but your father had no
qualities of mind or soul which enabled him to appreciate or care for
any woman, save as she could be of use to him, socially and financially.

In six years he man