they go on all the better for it afterwards. I should look on this year as
being the ornamental fringe to the intellectual dress you have been
weaving for yourself at school. And do not forget that the dress and the
trimming are not an end in themselves--they are only to enable you to
leave the house with decency, to go about your business; and at the end of
the first year I should count up my possessions and see where I was
wanting--if the dress proved thin, I would then set to work and furnish
myself with a jacket, by hard, steady work in the second year."

"But some of my school-work will be wasted if I don't keep it up."

"Quite true; but do not keep it up simply because you have once begun it;
some of your lessons will have done their work by ploughing and harrowing
your mind, and may be left behind. The use of school is to teach you how
to use your mind, and to try your hand at several branches of study, that
you may be able to follow whichever suits you."

"But I have not got any particular turn for anything, and it seems a pity
to drop things."

"Yes, it is a pity, but you are not going to teach, and you will have to
do the best you can. You had better make up your mind, before you begin
life, as to what sort of woman you want to be, and then cut your coat
according to your cloth, for if you begin by wanting to keep up
everything, you will probably end by dropping everything, in despair."

"Well, I want to keep up Latin and Greek and French and German, and
Algebra and Geometry and Chemistry and Mechanics, as well as English
subjects."