flowers and tennis, and never read because you do not like to be thought
unsociable: you are bound to improve your talents, but take it as your
motto, that _rules should be iron when they clash with our own wishes, and
wax when they clash with those of others_.

Yet we must yield _sensibly_, and not allow our time to be needlessly
wasted--at all events, by brothers and sisters and friends. It is
different with a father or mother: they are only lent to us for a part of
our lives, and no memory of sensible, useful work will be to us the same
pleasure in after years as the thought of the time that passed more
pleasantly for a mother because we spent it in idle (!) talk, or the
knowledge that a father had enjoyed the feeling that we were always at
hand if he wanted us. A strong-minded woman might consider matters
differently, and feel that a language learnt, or a district visited, was
of more value, but we shall not be able to reason so when we see life in
the new light which death throws upon it; the little restrictions of home
life will then assume a very different aspect.

Unless you are driven with an unusually loose rein, you will probably be
irked by having to be punctual, and to account for your letters and for
your goings and comings; but if you ever feel inclined to resent it, just
think what it will be when you are left free--free to be late because
there is no one to wait dinner for you, free to come and go as you will
because there is no one who cares whether you are tired or not; some of
these days you will give anything to be once more so "fettered."

Higher education often makes girls feel it waste of time to write notes
for their mothers, and to settle the drawing-room flowers: they "must go
and read." Now, what mental result, what benefit to the world, will result
from an ordinary woman's reading, which can, in any way, be comparable to