contracting.

Every time you look at your little hand, remember that you have its
education to accomplish, its debts of honor to repay, and that you
must make haste and teach it to be very clever, so that it may no
longer be said of you, that you are of no use to anybody.

And then, my dear child, remember that a day will come, when the revered
hands that now take care of your childhood--those hands which to-day
are yours, as it were--will become weak and incapacitated by age. You
will be strong, then, probably, and the assistance which you receive
now, you must then render to her, render it to her as you have received
it--that is to say, with your hands. It is the mother's hand which
comes and goes without ceasing about her little girl now. It is the
daughter's hand which should come and go around the old mother
hereafter--her hand and not another's.

Here again, my child, the mouth is nothing without the hand. The mouth
says, "I love," the hand proves it.



LETTER III.

THE TONGUE.

Now, about this doorkeeper, or porter, as we will call him, of the
mouth. I do not suppose you have guessed who he is; so I am going to
tell you.