flood the ocean. Scholastic men and women may speak of book Education;
it is mine to speak of life Education. Life is my field and my theme;
that great common arena where men and women do battle with the forces
about them.

We are educating all the time, and the question with us should be, How
do we educate ourselves? What manner of men and women do we make of
ourselves? The great question of life is an educational one. We all get
an Education; but the _kind_ is the point for us to determine. Some are
educated in vice, some in folly, some in selfishness, some in deception,
some in sensuality, some in nothing in particular and every thing in
general, some in goodness, some in truth and right, some in theology,
and some in religion. Our kinds of Education are legion. We can not live
without being educated some way. Every day gives us many lessons in
life. Every thought leaves its impression on the mind. Every feeling
weaves a garment for the spirit. Every passion plows a furrow into the
soul. All is motion in that mysterious, wonder-working house in which we
ourselves live--the mind.

Every hour of life has solemn, fearful results. The question should hang
all the time written in blazing capitals in the firmament of each soul,
"How am I educating?" It is wicked to let the crazy world educate us as
it will. It is awfully hazardous to yield ourselves up, as most people
do, to the circumstances of society about us. It is a fearful risk to
plunge into the stream of popular custom and float on like a dead sponge
drinking in its turbid water. Most people are like mocking-birds and
monkeys, repeating all they hear and mimicking all they see. Our duty
is to educate ourselves as we should.

Having hinted these general principles of Education, we may now address
ourselves especially to young women, and apply them to their life. The
daily life-education of the mass of young women is not what it should
be. It is much like the life-education of the mass of young men. It is
the Education of circumstances, custom, society, etc. Young women live,
think, and act just as society dictates. They wear what fashion says
shall be worn; they say what etiquette say is proper; they do what
custom dictates; their ideas of gracefulness, propriety, and life are
molded in the common mint of popular sentiment. They float on the stream
of society mere automatons in the great hand of the world. They do not
direct their own Education as though they ha