under process of development? Are you not aware that the fresh air
which you inhale and which purifies and invigorates the blood
contains for you the germ of death, which justifies in your good
parents the anxious care they take of your health, but which you
perhaps regard as entirely unnecessary?

Now, what the lungs are to the human body, that the heart is to the
soul. It is by the heart that we breathe the spiritual and divine
atmosphere that sustains our moral life. This atmosphere is composed
of three elements,--truth, goodness and beauty, which envelop and
penetrate the soul's substance; as it is the respiratory organ of the
mind it follows that for the heart, as well as for the lungs, there
is an epoch of development which is dangerous, and which,
consequently, demands the greatest possible care; it is the epoch of
your age at present. An emotion too vivid, an indiscreet thought, an
imprudent glance, is quite sufficient to imperil the interesting and
delicate process by which your moral constitution is formed, to
accelerate the development of the heart, and thus give to this most
important organ a pernicious precocity or a false direction.

Your mother, anxious and always trembling for your welfare, guards
it with tender solicitude from all the dangers to which it might be
exposed. But her vigilance cannot equal that of your guardian angel,
nor the care with which he removes you from contact with all that
might in any way tarnish the purity of your soul, or trouble its
peace and harmony. It is to you that the Holy Ghost addresses these
words of the Proverbs: With all watchfulness keep thy heart, because
life issueth out from it. [Footnote: Proverbs iv 23.]

The heart is, therefore, the seat of the moral life, and as the