Too often the girl, who by dint of conscientious struggles keeps up real
study, gets out of touch with her surroundings, and sees the stream of
family confidences, and affections, and appeals for help and sympathy
flowing towards the easy-going sister, who makes no struggles of any kind.
Your great wish is to be a true woman, "with continual comfort in her
face." Are your books, and your self-discipline, and your time-table, only
a hindrance to this? Must you starve either head or heart? Why cannot you
seem outwardly at leisure, and yet live an inner life of thought and work?
It needs self-denial, forethought, economy of time, and that most
Christian grace of tact; but these are all attainable, all part of that
Wisdom which "orders all things sweetly and strongly," and which is the
rightful heritage of every true woman. Let no delusion about amiability
induce you to leave off reading and study, only be very discreet as to how
and when you do it.

Let your time-table be a secret hair shirt, and not a red rag flaunted in
your family's face. But never give up reading and thinking, the keeping in
touch with abstract ideas. As long as you are young you can get on without
this, but, when the charm of youth deserts you, you will find life (and
others will find _you_) a blessing or a curse, according as you have
developed or starved your powers of mind. It may be that you find little
pleasure in your steady reading, and see no immediate results from it;
never mind, read on, lest you become in middle life one of those amiable,
empty-headed women who can give neither help, nor comfort, nor advice,
worth the taking. How many old maids, and young maids too, tied by home
duties, allowed their minds to get thin and empty: when, at last, they
were set free they were silly and inconsequent; no work requiring thought
and insight could be entrusted to them.

The second difficulty which is felt by many comes from the new lights of