icular to do, and who often
becomes on this account a nuisance to all earnest people around her.

In order to fulfill aright the duties of any relation of life, the first
requirement the greatest necessity, next to a firm resolution and will,
is good health. Without good health there is no substantial foundation
for anything earthly. Good health is the fountain of human enjoyment and
the greatest of earthly riches. It is the great beautifier; it is the
great preservative of good looks. How strange, then, that so many girls
are so careless, so provokingly careless, of this priceless blessing!
How strange that they will wear clothing that they know tends to break
down their health; tight corsets that compress the lungs and spoil the
natural shape of the body; tight shoes that interfere with the
circulation of blood, and make their noses and hands red, and give them
predisposition to colds and coughs and nervous headaches, all of which
put to severe tests the patience and affection of those around them.
Good health is always attractive; ill-health, invalidism, nervousness,
are very apt to be repellant. Better good health than beauty, if one
were obliged to choose--which one is not, for good health is one of the
chief elements of beauty.

So, if you aim first to be good and kind and intelligent and industrious
and skillful, so that you may be fitted to guide and adorn a home should
you be blessed with one, or to be fitted to shape your life to
usefulness and independence if you never have a home of your own, and if
in connection with these aims you seek to obtain and preserve good
health, you will, so far as this life is concerned, "be thoroughly
furnished unto all good works." You will become a noble woman, whose
adorning will be not alone of the outward appearance, but of the inner
life and of the soul--an adorning which, according to St. Paul, "is in
the sight of God of great price."

LETTER IV.

PERSONAL HABITS.

_My Dear Daughter:_--The power of winning love and friends, which is
such a precious possession to all young people especially to young
girls, will, in connection with good behavior and good manners, depend
very largely upon certain personal habits, chief among which are order,
neatness, promptness, and cheerfulness.

The girl or woman who is personally disorderly and untidy in her room
and dress puts a great strain upon the patience and affection of all
those associated with her who are possesse