g, are influenced in conduct somewhat by
their associates and friends; but young people especially are
susceptible to the influence of example. And it is a painful but well
known fact that young people are much more easily and quickly influenced
by bad example than by good. One frivolous, vain, forward, pert young
girl, coming for a season into association with a company of young
people, may in a few short weeks make her impress on the manners and
conversation of the whole of them. Her slang expressions will be
adopted; her loud manners and eccentricities of dress will be imitated;
her frivolity and dislike for any of the serious duties of life will
prove contagious.

For you, and for any young girl, I would consider dangerous and harmful
intimate association with:

1. The young girl who, either from circumstances or natural
disposition, does not compel herself, or is not compelled to do
something--to study her lessons and take some useful share in every-day
duties. "Nothing to do is worse than nothing to eat," said a great man,
Thomas Carlyle; and observing parents or teachers know this to be
especially true of young people. It makes no difference that they don't
want to do anything or to exert themselves. The very absence of exertion
makes them weak and indisposed to effort. It is a lamentable lack at the
present time among a large proportion of the daughters of comfortable
and refined homes, that they have small physical strength and no
qualities of endurance at all. They are "all tired out" if they sweep
and dust or do housework for an hour or two, or take a half-mile walk on
an errand, or sew continuously for an hour. Very likely they will want
to lie down and rest an hour after such exertion. This is all the
result of unexercised muscles and mental indolence. That mother was
quite right, who, when her boarding-school daughter complained that it
made her arms ache to sweep, replied: "Well, you must sweep till it
doesn't make them ache." Mind and body both grow strong through
exercise. Unexercised muscles, of course, will be weak and flabby and
tire easily. But the young girl whom it tires to work is most likely on
the _qui vive_ about some folly or other nearly all the time. Lack of
healthful mental and bodily occupation and stimulus will almost
certainly produce a craving for unhealthy excitement. Such a girl is apt
to be constantly planning for mere pleasure and to have "a good time."
And, oh! what an unsatisfy