the rose, will shut their lives within their lives.

There is no time in a girl's life so neglected, and yet so dependent
upon sympathy, as that when she is first thrown upon her own efforts.
Too old to be any longer led, she is not old enough to be left without
guidance. This time usually comes when she has finished the ordinary
school course and finds herself, all at once, waiting, either for an
entrance into what is called society, or for an opportunity to earn
her living.

There is a certain lightness of heart, carelessness, _abandon_,
maybe, about girls while they are still in school, which is both
delightful and natural, however provoking to teachers. Every thing
is very bright now; and if the girl learns her lessons, is obedient,
and tries to think, she believes that somehow things will all come
around right with time. All at once she is confounded. She awakes in
the morning, and finds that school does not keep to-day,--no, nor
to-morrow! What is to be done? Going and coming, which get to be more
going and coming; dish-washing, which daily increases into dish-washing;
or _ennui_, which degenerates into melancholy, ensue. Life is not what
the school-girl supposed. Six months of it make her older than a whole
school-year.

Girls look upon graduation day as a grand portal through which they
are to enter into a palace glistening with splendor; but, lo! when
they reach that portal, they see only a very low gate-way, while a
hedge, thorny and high, shuts out the palace. How to get through?
Rather, how are their elders to make them see that, with the patience
and energy of the prince in the story, they can cause the hedge to turn
to roses, and open wide before them?