indeed. They can do nothing to provide for themselves. Then there are
others who so pride themselves on their independence, that one of the
sweetest charms of womanhood is lost--the charm of gentle trustfulness.

I have suggested enough faults for one lesson,--perhaps as many as you
can carry in your mind, certainly as many as you can correct, although I
have not exhausted the list that I find in my correspondence. As I said
at the beginning, these faults are pointed out, not in the spirit of
criticism, but in the spirit of kindness, of truest interest, and with
desire to help. Many of them may seem very trivial faults, but small
specks stain the whiteness of a fair robe. "Little things make
perfection." You cannot afford to keep the least discovered fault in
your character or conduct, for little blemishes are the beginnings of
greater ones that by and by will destroy all the beauty of life.

"It is the little rift within the lute
That by and by will make music mute,
And, ever widening, slowly silence all--
The little rift within the lover's lute:
Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,
That rotting inward, slowly moulders all."

Will you not, then, pray this prayer: "Cleanse thou me from secret
faults"? Do not try to hide your faults--hiding them does not cure them.
Every true woman wants to grow into perfect moral and spiritual beauty.
In order to do this, she wants to know wherein she fails, what blemishes
others see in her, what blemishes God sees in her. Then, as quickly as
she discovers the faults, she wants to have them removed. The old artist
Apelles had for his motto: "_Nulla dies sine linea_"--"No day without a
line." Will you not take this motto for yours, and seek every day to get