TO YOUNG WOMEN.


1. TO BE A WOMAN, in the truest and highest sense of the word is to be
the best thing beneath the skies. To be a woman is something more than
to live eighteen or twenty years; something more than to grow to
the physical stature of women; something more than to wear flounces,
exhibit dry goods, sport jewelry, catch the gaze of lewd-eyed men;
something more than to be a belle, a wife, or a mother. Put all these
qualifications together and they do but little toward making a true
woman.

2. BEAUTY AND STYLE are not the surest passports to womanhood--some of
the noblest specimens of womanhood that the world has ever seen have
presented the plainest and most unprepossessing appearance. A woman's
worth is to be estimated by the real goodness of her heart, the
greatness of her soul, and the purity and sweetness of her character;
and a woman with a kindly disposition and well-balanced temper is both
lovely and attractive, be her face ever so plain, and her figure ever
so homely; she makes the best of wives and the truest of mothers.

3. BEAUTY IS A DANGEROUS GIFT.--It is even so. Like wealth, it has
ruined its thousands. Thousands of the most beautiful women are
destitute of common sense and common humanity. No gift from heaven
is so general and so widely abused by woman as the gift of beauty. In
about nine cases in ten it makes her silly, senseless, thoughtless,
giddy, vain, proud, frivolous, selfish, low and mean. I think I have
seen more girls spoiled by beauty than by any other one thing, "She
is beautiful, and she knows it," is as much as to say that she is