practice in expressing her thoughts and for reference afterwards."

"But it would take so long."

"You would be well repaid, and you would not read any books in your time
for study which were not worth taking trouble with. In reading a book, I
should put a mark to everything that struck me, and at the end of a
chapter should look over the marked bits, and put a second mark to those
parts that seemed specially important, after I had mastered the drift of
the chapter. It would then be easy, when you had finished the book, to
write a review, for you would only look at the doubly marked bits."

"And am I to do no science?"

"I should vary your science with your opportunities, because you have no
strong turn for any one in particular. When you go to town in the winter
for that long visit you should get some cooking lessons, and before you go
you should get the books recommended by the South Kensington Cookery
School, and study the bookwork on the subject. When you go away in the
summer, you should take up geology, or botany, or whatever suits the place
you go to."

"But I shall only have smatterings of things at this rate!"

"Smatterings are very good things in their way, so long as you are not
misled into thinking them more than they are! They are the keys which will
enable you, in the future, to follow up the subject for which you may have
any special opportunities. They also prevent your being quite a dumb note
anywhere,--it is something to be able to listen intelligently! Besides, if
your mind is open on all sides, you will never find any one dull, for you