m method, accuracy, value, proportions,
relations. But how many girls are taught arithmetic well?--Very few
indeed. And what is the consequence?--When the girl becomes a wife,
if she knows nothing of figures, and is innocent of addition and
multiplication, she can keep no record of income and expenditure, and
there will probably be a succession of mistakes committed which may
be prolific in domestic contention. The woman, not being up to her
business--that is, the management of her domestic affairs in conformity
with the simple principles of arithmetic--will, through sheer ignorance,
be apt to commit extravagances, though unintentional, which may be most
injurious to her family peace and comfort.

Method, which is the soul of business, is also of essential importance
in the home. Work can only be got through by method. Muddle flies
before it, and hugger-mugger becomes a thing unknown. Method demands
punctuality, another eminently business quality. The unpunctual woman,
like the unpunctual man, occasions dislike, because she consumes and
wastes time, and provokes the reflection that we are not of sufficient
importance to make her more prompt. To the business man, time is money;
but to the business woman, method is more--it is peace, comfort, and
domestic prosperity.

Prudence is another important business quality in women, as in men.
Prudence is practical wisdom, and comes of the cultivated judgment. It
has reference in all things to fitness, to propriety; judging wisely of
the right thing to be done, and the right way of doing it. It calculates
the means, order, time, and method of doing. Prudence learns from
experience, quickened by knowledge.

For these, amongst other reasons, habits of business are necessary to
be cultivated by all women, in order to their being efficient helpers in
the world's daily life and work. Furthermore, to direct the power of the
home aright, women, as the nurses, trainers, and educators of children,
need all the help and strength that mental culture can give them.

Mere instinctive love is not sufficient. Instinct, which preserves the
lower creatures, needs no training; but human intelligence, which is in
constant request in a family, needs to be educated. The physical health
of the rising generation is entrusted to woman by Providence; and it is
in the physical nature that the moral and mental nature lies enshrined.
It is only by acting in accordance with the natural laws, which before