animating your courage, prepare for the future by sowing at present
the germs of those beautiful virtues which grace irrigates, and whose
fruits will rejoice your old age and atone for the sterility of your
earlier years.

Your future happiness is insured if you fully comprehend the
importance of the epoch which you now begin, and the greatness of its
results for the rest of your life. Let past delinquencies become an
incentive, stimulating your will to energetic action. Let the need of
repairing the past, and the importance of preparing for the future
inspire you with generous resolutions and an ardent desire of
acquiring all the virtues necessary to a person of your sex and
position, in order that you may discharge in a worthy manner all the
duties which may be required of you. Regard the future with a calm
and firm eye, without exaggerating the difficulties, but also without
dissembling the dangers. The first condition required to avoid a
danger is to know it, for the ignorance that conceals from us the
snares which we should avoid is--after the evil inclination that
leads us into them--man's greatest misfortune, and the most
disastrous of the effects of original sin.

Women, even in the most humble walks of life, can scarcely hope
now-a-days to enjoy that sweet, calm and peaceful life which was
formerly insured by the purest morals and the most pious customs.

If the world, spite of that inordinate desire for reform and
innovation which consumes it, has not yet seriously endeavored to
withdraw woman from the circle to which Providence would have her
devote the activity of her mind and life; if it has consented till
now to have her shun the theatre and the whirlpool of political