IB University of California • Berkeley Gift of E. SLOTTEN 9 ft s V \ «fL ■ WHAT NOW? FOR YOUNG LADIES. BY CHARLES F. DEEMS, D. D .. PAHDit of THE ' ' CHUBCH OF THE 8TEANGEB8," NEW TOItK. PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 150 NASSAU-STREET, NEW YORK. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 18G9, by the American Tract Society, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court ot the United States for the Southern District of New York. What Now? T is a remark of that keen analyser of human charac- ter and shrewd observer of human manners, John Foster. [ have observed that most la- dies who have had what is con- sidered bs an education have no idea of an education progressive through # life. Saving attained a certain measure of accomplishment, knowledge, manner-. etc., they consider themselves as made up, and so take their station. They are 4 WHAT NOW ? pictures which being quite finished are now put in a frame, a gilded one if pos- sible, and hung up in permanence of beauty ! in permanence, that is to say, till old Time with his rude and dirty fingers, soil the charming colors. 77 It is to the young ladies who have had "what is considered as an educa- tion, 77 that the counsels of this little book are addressed, whether their training has heretofore been conducted in schools, or under the guidance of skilful hands at home. In this generation and in this country, very many young ladies have had the advantage of a regular course in academies and seminaries, some of which are so wide in their aims as to take the name of colleges. There are very many young ladies who have had careful in- struction in the domestic circle, and have such good minds that some of them sur- 1 HE woKiv NOT DONE 5 pass many who iv graduate, " as it is called, from the higher schools in the country. It is hoped that both classes will be interested in the sentiments here pre- sented to their consideration. It is quite natural, however, thai in addressing edu- cated young ladies, about to enter upon the active duties of life, taking a posi- tion which causes them to cease to be considered as girls, and ranking them With women, the niind of the writer should turn to those who have passed through school-life; but there is no sug- gestion or advice addressed to them which is not believed to be equally prof- itable to the other class of intelligent young ladies. You have gone through the pas girlhood. You stand before a great door which, not many years ago. seemed to you 6 WHAT NOW? to be a long way in the distance. Look at it now. It bears an inscription. That inscription is the question, What now? Yes, what now ? Something now, sure- ly. You are not of that class of young ladies described by John Foster as hav- ing no idea that education is progressive through life. If so, wdiat a grand mis- take you have made ! You have mere- ly begun. The most that any, even the best schools in the country, can do for their pupils, is merely to teach them how to educate themselves. They give them the point of departure, the charts, the compass, the instruction in naviga- tion, and launch them upon the sea on which they are to make the voyage of life towards the port of heaven. They must ever be watching the winds, guard- ing the helm, taking their bearings, and making their soundings. But alas ! how THE WORK NOT DONE. 7 many young ladies are launched and go a-drifting, helmless and compassless, whithersoever wind and wave may bear t them ! And how many go down at tea, or wreck on reels where many a bark lies shattered! To take up Foster's figure, y0n have simply chalked on the canvas the out- lines of the landscape. The Minting ta to be a lifelong work. You are care- folly to mix your colors, study the shades, lay on the pigment, and bring your picture to such perfection that it may be framed in immortality and hung in the grand gallery of eternity. When a nobleman had engaged an artist to execute a masterpiece of sculpture Un- him, he visited the studio after several weeks' absence, and it seemed to him that the artist had made little progress. " What have you been doing?" said he. 8 WHAT NOW? 44 Working at this figure.? "But I see nothing done beyond what was accom- plished before my last visit." "Why," said the sculptor, "I have developed this muscle, I have modified this portion of the drapery, I have slightly changed this expression of the lip." " But these are trifles." "True, my lord," replied the sculptor; "but perfection is made up of trifles." And bo in the development of charac- ter. No one can appreciate the hidden labor, the fastidious carefulness, with which you will toil in secret to strength- en some weak point in your character, to bring out some faculty and to educate some power. But the world can appre- ciate the whole of a nobly developed character. It is in this as in other things, as in painting for instance. The picture charms from its vraisemblance, THE WORK NOT DONE. 9 its truth to nature, its soft blending of colors, its harmonious adjustment of fea- tures. The beholder is delighted. The slightest disproportion in a figure, the slighest imbalance of tight and shade, would break the charm. The beholder could not tell why; bat there would be something wrong. How little can he who walks a gallery of paintings tell of the toil, the study of nature and of the masters, the close devotion to details, the whole week spent on a twig, on a leaf, on a square inch of flame or smoke or foliage. And BO in music. The harmony and the melody arc perfect. r riie orchestra is perfectly cast. The composer and man- ager have neglected no detail. The in- struments are brought to exactest accord. The voices are trained to their besi capabilities. The effect upon the audi- ence is prodigious. A wrong note, a 9 10 WHAT NOW ? weak string, a single harsh voice would destroy the effect. But who can esti- mate the long years of scientific training upon the part of the composer, to enable him to produce a work which accords at once with science and the beatings of ten thousand human hearts ? Who can appreciate the care with which each member of the orchestra has brought his voice to a perfect consonance with a hundred other voices of different powers? And so with oratory. The chains of logic are flung round an audience, and the lever of the heart is put into the windlass of the intellect, and the whole mass of human spirits is drawn by the power of a single hand. But who can tell what fields of science and history have been explored, and what hours of careful weighing of arguments, what years of the study of language -and voice, THE WORK NOT DONE. 11 and of the balance of human passions, what efforts of self-control have marked the history of the orator, before he found the capability of seizing, and lifting, and swaying thousands of human souls ! These results occupy small space. The painting is hung, and in one minute its entire effect has entered the mind and enchained it. The key-note is struck, and in ten minutes the crowded concert - room heaves with emotion. The oration begins, and in one hour thousands of hearts have been elevated to the highest region of sentiment. or hurried to the verge of the greatesl moral or physical daring. But the preparation has bfcen long and laborious — so long and labori- ous that the producers of effects in these several cases are not aware how much they did before they could do any thing very great. Every object upon which 12 WHAT NOW ? the painter had gazed, every sound of man or bird or instrument to which the composer had listened, every thought, fact, argument, -or sentiment which had entered the mind or heart of the orator, had carried on the education which was necessary to the production of his mas- terpiece. You must not, therefore, ever think that your work is entirely done. You must not regard any thing as a trifle which will help you to produce the grand effect of life. No moment of time is contemptible, no book, no acquaintance, no conversation. They all modify, all educate. The seal will make its exact likeness on the wax. Every line, how minute soever, will leave its counter- part on the plastic material. You are to stamp your character's image upon the world and upon your eternity. Your THE WOBX NOT DOM.. 13 doom beyond the grave will answer to your character as the alto of the wax answers to the basic of the seal. The result is worth the effort. What- ever may have been the previous toil, anxiety, and care of the painter, the musician, and the orator, the hour when hundreds and thousands arc standing with rapt delight before the almost speak- ing canvas, or palpitating with rapture, or melting with emotion under the rav- ishing strain of the music, or surrender- ing themselves to the magic power of eloquence, ts a reward to each amply repaying all outlay of time or thought or care. The hour of victory is worth the year's toilsome campaign. And will it be with you. Whatever you may do towards educating yourself, there will come times of trial in winch, if you are prepared for its emergencies, you will 14 WHAT NOW ? find every power taxed but every labor rewarded. There will then be no re- grets over privation, and study, and care. If now, you really feel the truth of the statement that your education is not finished, and that you are to work at it as long as you live, you may be willing to heed a few suggestions of practical importance. You have just quit school, not ''fin- ished,' 7 as the phrase of the ignorant fashionable world has it; on the contra- ry, unfinished, very much so indeed ; but superior to badly taught girls in this — that you feel how very unfinished you are, while they, pretty simpletons, go forth to simper bald sentiment and lisp bad French in circles as silly as them- selves, to distress their parents, to co- quette with their lovers, to ruin their husbands, and to be mothers of children THE REVIEW. 15 who shall inherit their own weaknesses and superficiality. They are surprised at the question, What now? 'What now? indeed! I thought I had don< \V You are not so. You stand not at the gate of entrance but at the portal of de- parture. You go forth to do something, something greatly worth the doing. Make a Review. First of all, make a review. What have you done? How r far are you edu- cated ! What portion of your character have you inflected? Wherein arc you weakest? To what extent are you able to bear burdens, to deny self, to go for- ward alone, to help those upon whom you may lean, or those who may lean upon you? Take time to do this calm- ly. You will have the warm and cordial greetings of many true friends and the 16 WHAT NOW ? complimentary greetings of many hollow fashionable acquaintances. "When this shall have passed, go into yourself and ask, "What do all these expect of me now ? my parents and brothers and sis- ters, and the domestics, and my circle of relatives, and my pastor, and his neighborhood, and my acquaintances ?" Many will expect nothing. They never think of their claims upon you or your claims upon them, or the momentous re- sponsibilities of human existence. But some will think, and they will observe you, and they will judge your parents, your teachers, and youraelves, by the views which they perceive you take of life and its complicated relationships. If they discover that you think the whole of education lies in the little curriculum of studies embraced in the plan of any seminary now existing, they will know THE REVI11W. 17 at once that your mind is too narrow to take in the great circle of human duty. Remember also, young friend, that up to the time you left school your educa- tion was making progress under very different influences from those which will hereafter attend it. In school even- thing calculated to interrupt you was ex- cluded. Self-cultivation by direct effort was secured. But these efforts were not unaided. Your course was marked out for you. You have never had to spend a moment's thonghi upon what text- books should next be studied. You had them furnished to your hands. In mas- tering them y<>u had the daily aid of those who had gone carefully and rJB- p.'atedlv over those studies, having for themselves had the advantage of excel- lent instruction. And when your teach- ers reached you they brought to your 18 WHAT NOW ? aid all the experience in explaining and enforcing which they had gathered from years of labor spent on the culture of other pupils. This assistance has been most material. There will come another most percep- tible difference. In schools and semina- ries you have had the stimulus minis- tered by the literary society, by the presence of books and constant on-going of study all around you. You have been in classes. You have been cheered by literary companionship. An emula- tion has been generated, and when you otherwise would have fagged, the energy and perseverance of some room-mate or classmate has renerved you to your la- bors. You have been travelling in a crowd of gay companions, with now and then a halting-time and a season of fes- tive refreshment and a girding up again, Till: BEYIEW. 19 ■8 at the close and opening of school sessions. Now you must go alone. You must select your own books and methods of study. You must be your own teacher. You must study without the excitement of knowing that the recitation-hour will soon arrive, and that your reputation with those whose opinions you respect may be forfeited by an hour's idleness. You have no rivalry in study now. Coolly, and from high principle, and a feeling of the necessity of so doing, must you gnre yourself up to the work of car* tying forward your intellectual and moral training. The props fall from around you. [f you have the strength you are expected to have at the close of your school-days, you will stand and grow ; if not. yon will droop and dwindle and die. 20 WHAT NOW? Very many young ladies regard every school regulation as a restraint necessa- ry only for childhood ; and when they are making an estimate of the delight-ful- ness of entering upon womanhood, to all the caresses of friends, and flatteries of admirers, and brilliance of fetes, they add the casting off of this odious con- linement. Well, the truth is. that you are not to be in precisely the same kind of restraint, nor the same amount, but unless you have learned to bear the absence from society necessary to intel- lectual culture, so as to preserve a meas- ure of it, your mental growth has nearly come to an end. If you have dwelt upon your departure from school as setting you free from tasks, from early rising, from habits of investigation ; if you ex- pect to sleep in the morning as long as sloth soothes, nnd to rise with listloss- FUTURE CULTURE. 21 ness, and droop through the day with no excitement except the thoughts of the style of dress you shall wear to the next party of pleasure, your education has not been even respectably began. Future Culture. Now you must unite in yourself the double character of teacher and pupil. The reputation you have won at school has been simply as a learner. You are henceforth to achieve 4 a double reputa- tion. You are to teach yourself. You will occasionally review your old stud- ies, lor they are the roots of all the growth in the wide and flourishing forest of science and literature. But you must push your studies beyond, and you must keep up with advancing science and lit- erature. " Reading makes a full man.'' snvs Lord Bacon. You must read. You 22 WHAT NOW? will read. The habits already formed will lead you to this. The danger is that you may read the wrong kinds of books, or read the right kind improper- ly. Upon these points a few suggestions are affectionately addressed to your un- derstanding. (1.) Be content not to read every thing. You cannot go over the whole field. Make a selection. Not because it is a book has a volume claims upon you. V<»u would not allow every kind of man to talk to you for hours. Be as choice of books, for books are men's minds made portable. As there are so many good books in each department of learn- ing, and whereas your time is short, select the very best. (2.) Be sure that you never read a sentence in a book which you would not be pleased to have vour father or vonr FUTURE CULTURE. 23 brother know to be engaging your atten- tion. Never read a book which you must peruse in secret. (3.) Beware of new books. Let them take their place in society before you admit them to your library. They will do you as much good five years hence as now, and then those assayers of books, the critics, will have passed them through the fire, and the great public of reading persons, often forming a safer tribunal for the trial of books than even the crit- ics, will have stamped the mark of an approximated title valuation. There are enough books which have survived three generations, to engage your attention while the books published this year will be running the gauntlet. (4.) Beware of books with colored pa- per (overs, the cheap thin issues of a depraved press, the anonymous nouvel- 24 WHAT NOW? lettes, and tales and stories. Better never read than peruse such trash as these contain. Be sure that the man who wrote the book you are reading is really a great man in his department. Do not be ashamed of being ignorant of the productions of the modern, flippant, bizarre writings, while you are unfamiliar with Milton and Shakespeare, Spenser and Ben Jonsori, the men that " built the lofty rhyme/' and the grand old fathers of our noble English tongue. If you read tjie modern books of such men as Macaulay, and Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt, read with them the older and the greater men, to whom they make constant refer- ence, and from whose "well of English undefiled " they drew the water spark- ling in their shallower channels. (5.) Make yourself a small good libra- ry to begin on. Let it embrace the FUTUBH CULTURE. SMI works of a very few of the greatest poets, the greatest historians, the great- est essayists, the greatest metaphysi- cians, and the greatest religious writers in the language. Of course thi: Www a: will lie at the foundation of your stud- ies. These, with a very few books in each of those departments of physical science with which a woman should be acquainted, and the best dictionary of the language, and, if practicable, an en- cyclopedia, will make you such a begin- ning as will give strength and breadth and consistency to your self-culture. If you have been Studying other languages let the same rigid rule be applied to the literature of those languages. The care- ful reading of one book will show you what you further need in that depart- ment : and so you will pass over the field of English literature, omitting much, 4 26 WHAT NOW ? but short as life is, and many as may be your cares, you will doubtless by perse- verance obtain all that is necessary. (G.) You will also have your periodi- cals. Few things produce superficiality more than a promiscuous reading of our current periodicals. You will have two selections to make ; one from the mass of such publications soliciting your at- tention, and another, from those which you tt,ke, the articles proper to be read. It is one of the necessities of successful editing of our monthly magazines that so much useless matter must be introduced to make them popular enough to render them profitable to their proprietors. There is no monthly magazine in exist- ence, with which I am acquainted, which should be read in all its articles by an intellectual young lady seeking a high and large cultivation of mind. Your FUTUKE CULTURE. 27 own judgment must guide you in this. A very few of the best monthlies and quarterlies should be suffered to enter our families, and from these a young lady of refinement may select, perhaps, all the light reading necessary to mental recreation. It is painful to observe how low the standard of mind among our la- dies is, judging from the contents of the most popular magazines for ladies. In your measure do what you can to cor- rect this evil, by laboring to enlarge in your sex the class of more elevated readers. The material being gathered, how to build is another very grave question, upou which the limits we now assign our- selves will allow only a few suggestions. 1. Read slowly. If physical dyspep- sia is caused as much by rapid eating as by a multifarious diet, so may an 28 WHAT NOW? intellectual dyspepsia be superinduced by bolting your mental food. The books you read are the pabulum of your mind. You eat to live, not live to eat; so you must read to live, not live to read. It is not the amount read which will fur- nish your mind, but the quality and mode of reading. No reading will profit which is not mixed with thought, and you cannot think of that which is rapid- ly posing before your eyes. 2. Therefore read thoughtfully. Stop your author and catechize him. See if his testimony be reliable. Compare him with himself. Let him not speak, and run from you. Seize him and hold him, until you have gathered from him all that he has to give. You will wish to make use of your reading. To that end it must be remembered. Memory de- pends upon attention. Attention requires FUTUUE CULTURE. 29 time and thought. It ia said of Edmund Burke, that he had a great memory of what he read. Some one has recorded of him that lie read every book aa though it were the only copy in existence, as thotigb he wciv allowed only oae read- ing of its pagan, and as tbongh cadi sen- tence contained whai was t<> he of daily. and everlasting, and immense import- anee to him. No wonder that he gar- nered his learning so well! I have ob- served among the pupils of our schools two classes of memory. There are those whose minds seem like pasteboard spread with fluid gum, t<> which all gnats, all down, all atoms drifting in the atmo- sphere adhere. They are as easily rub- bed off by any rough hand. I have seen others laboring long with apparently lit- tle advancement But they were plant- tboughta like trees, whieh, the longer 30 WHAT NOW V they remained in the soil of the mind, although that soil might be coarse and rocky, were striking their roots deeper, and spreading their branches, and mak- ing themselves ready to produce annual fruits. So let it be with your reading. The memory of words may not be so important, but if the thought be great, and the sentiment be just, it should be incorporated with your mental constitu- tion, not laid on like a robe for a tem- porary display on a certain occasion, to be thereafter flung off and forgotten, but taken into the very heart of your intellect, and passed into the circulation of your mind's blood. 3. Read topically. When you strike a rich vein run it through your whole library. You will thus be able to bring to your mind all the best that has been said upon a given subject by a variety FUTURE CULTURE. 31 of minds. You will often find it well, for instance, when studying a certain portion of history, to examine and coin- pare the biographies of the principal actors in that particular age, and then see them grouped by a few master hands. Occasionally our poets and other word- painters give you aid by their analysis of character, and fix correct views of character by striking imagery and well- wrought story. 4. Read for use, and use what you read. There is such a thing as intel- lectual wine. You may perpetually be stimulating your mind with intoxicating reading. The reaction mud be mental depression, and the longer the stimulus be kept on, and the longer the return to a natural healthful state be postpone- 1, the deeper will be the depression and the more weakened will be the intellect HI WHAT NOW? when it wakes up from this unhealthful dreaming. There are those who are thus driven again and again to the stimulant until a mental delirium tremens sets in on them, or they are reduced to a driv- elling idiocy. Beware of this kind of reading. Eead for strength, for growth, for use. Review your mental states while reading. Ask yourself again and again, how am I to use this? What does this illustrate or prove ? How am I to connect this with what I already know? Where shall I place it in my mind to be ready to draw upon at the needful time ? Napoleon said he had his mind arranged like a bureau with drawers, so that he could open one and study what it contained, shut it up and read another, without mingling the con- tents. How different this from many minds which seem to find their best rep- YOUR FIELD. 33 resentation in a lumber-garret or old curiosity-shop! In all your reading, dear young friend, ask yourself, how shall I answer for this at the judgment-seat of Christ? To Him you must give an account. The pre- cious hours spent over tawdry stories, if given to devout reading and study would fit you for greater usefulness up- on earth and aid vour preparation for heaven. Your Field. The question, " What now ?" recurs. Why have you spent years away from home, after having spent years at home, in the study of books of human learning? AVhy this costly labor, this large outlay of money, strength, and time? Have you ever asked yourself this question seriously ? Is all this rearing of schools 34 WHAT NOW ? and colleges, these collections of accom- plished teachers, this expenditure of time and intellect merely for a show, for a variety in the phases of life ? Is there nothing substantial to come as the result of it ? What now ? You leave school. Is all done? Verily, it were sad to think that all the difference between educated and uneducated young ladies should be in the fact that the former can utter a few phrases in foreign idioms, thrum a few tunes on a musical instrument, or paint a few square feet of canvas. If this be all the difference, education is a hoax and the time spent on it wasted. But you know that there is a high and great difference. You are to go forth to great usefulness, to do much good, to do much more than the uneducated. If you do not exert a more powerful and healthful influence upon society than YOUR FIELD. 35 those who have not had your advan- tages, you will do the great mischief of bringing contempt upon education, espe- cially upon the education of your sex. The men around you will be confirmed in that low prejudice that it is useless to labor for the high cultivation of female intellect, and thus you will lower your sex in the estimation of the world, and paralyze efforts which, if successful, will give the advantages of wholesome learn- ing to many young ladies who will make proper use of it. Remember, then, that the interests of your sex are. in a large measure, in your hands Young men. as they close their colle- giate career, begin to calculate upon the professions they shall enter. Young la- dies cannot do precisely as they, and therefore often think they have nothing to do. They go home and wait to be 36 WHAT NOW ? married. They marry just because it is usual for young ladies to marry, and that is as far as they look, as far as they care. What a mistake ! Every woman should feel that her profession is to do good, in beautiful ways becoming her womanly nature. If you, my friend, have proper views of your place in soci- ety and your responsibility to God, you will go forth to use all your present knowledge to bless those around you, and go forth gathering that you may scatter again. Is your field of usefulness small ? You will allow one whose respect for you imparts the disposition rather to lead you in the path of duty than through amusing speculations or fanciful scenes, to survey with you the field upon which you must now enter, and if possible point out methods in which you can -fill- HOME DUTIES. H fil your engagements to society and to God: Home Duties. The first who have claims upon you are your parents. Under God they gave you being. When you were utterly help- less they sustained you. They have pro- vided for you all the helps you have had in the cultivation of your intellect. They submitted to the pain of being separated from you through those years when you would have been very interesting to them. Almost immediately after the troublesome period of infancy and child- hood, just as you were beginning to be self-reliant, as your mind had expanded sufficiently to make you a companion for them, they endured the pain of parting, solely for your good. They knew also that all the months of your society they 38 WHAT NOW ? lost were hurrying you on to that period when other love would take the prece- dence of theirs, that love which draws young ladies from the home-nest to other shelter and other society. Yet, with a parent's unselfish love, they gave you up for your own benefit. Now then, when you return to them, until the time shall come when he shall appear who is to abstract you from parental embraces to try with him life's ruder labors and more ragged paths, let every day be filled with the gentlest, sweetest, most daughterly attentions to your father and mother. Father and mother ! Perhaps there is only one now ; the other may have gone. Your father sits in a lonely house. The friend of his youth, who in early days entered with him into love's yoke- fellowship, your mother, has gone away from his side to return no more. With HOME DUTIES. 39 what solicitous expectancy has he been endeavoring to hurry the slow hours of his desolateness, to the time when your return to the homestead shall gladden his -heart by a thousand little winning attentions, reminding him of your moth- er's first devotion. To take that moth- er's place is no small honor and no small labor. Or, it may be that your mother lives, lives to feel how bereft a widow is, when her stay has been struck from beneath her ; and it may be she has denied her- self many a comfort and studied a tighter economy, to purchase for jroo the intel- lectual furniture wherewith your life is to be adorned. How many a close cal- culation of means may she have made, how many a night lain down with an aching head, because she could not see how she was to provide from her scanty 40 WHAT NOW? income for all the mouths at home, and have sufficient surplus to keep you amid all the advantages of a high seminary of learning. And since your father died, and upon her has devolved the work of looking after many a thing which does not usually fall to woman's sphere, it may be that she feels how much of prac- tical training was omitted in her educa- tion, and seen at length the folly of hav- ing wasted so many of her school-hours. This may be the secret of many a pas- sage in her letters which you thought rather gratuitous, and as reflecting upon your habits of industry. Lay them to heart. Go home to help and cheer her. Let the harvest of her tears come quick- ly and richly in your abundant cheerful- ness in doing any thing a daughter ought to do for a widowed mother ; watch and anticipate her wants and desires, add no HOME DUTIES. 41 feather's weight to her burdens, but be hands and feet and wings to your mother. But both parents may be living, living in abundance, well-educated themselves, moving in a high social circle, to which you are to be admitted, and where you are to sustain the reputation of the fam- ily. In that circle you may do much good, if to a trained mind you have added the graces of a genuine, hearty piety. Carry thither the wisdom which cometh down from above, and the Lord will make you fruitful in all good works. Your parents may not have had your advantages. In good circumstances, hav- ing obtained a fortune which lias placed them in positions to make them feel the need of an education, they early deter- mined that you should never endure all the mortifications to which their want of culture has subjected them, and for 6 42 WHAT NOW ? this reason they have freely spent their means to educate you. Or, having nat- ural talents, and lacking both the full purse and the accomplishments of edu- cation, they have practised a joint econ- omy and invested the whole of their annual savings in your education. They expect you to return to them to be the light of the little home-circle, and adorn their latter days, and by your superior education to be able to make such social alliances as shall advance you. Are they to be disappointed ? Nay, verily. Lay not up for yourself hours of remorseful self-reproach, when you shall have blasted their hopes and hastened their departure from you. If at any time you perceive the superior- ity which your training and associations have given you, as you value the respect of the good, as you place any estimate HOME DUTIES. 43 upon the invaluable treasure of a per- manent self-respect, never for a moment, by deed or word or look, betray a dis- dainful sense of their inferiority. When you take the hud hand of that kind father in yours, remember that the fruits of the toil which hardened those hands were not expended upon his own pleas- ures, but upon your education ; and re- member that while you were sheltered and quiet, turning your books, dancing your snowy hands over the keys or strings of musical instruments, that mother was in employments that brown- ed her complexion, but robed her daugh- ter in the dresses which fitted her to mingle with the refined. If there be of unholy pride a more disgusting exhi- bition than any other, it is the disdain with which some girls who have received a little smattering of school-learning af- 44 WHAT NOW? feet to look down upon their plain moth • ers. My young friend, be not so. The truly refined and well-bred will despise you if they see such exhibitions in you ; and you can never by such pride lift yourself from being still that mother's daughter. I have no kind of respect for the pretension to education which some young ladies make who are willing to sit in parlor and drawing-room, working beautiful embroidery, thrumming the pi- ano or sighing over novels, while their mothers are in the nursery, the laundry, or the kitchen, toiling amid domestic work, which must be done if the family be comfortable. Heaven have mercy upon the wretched man who, for his sins, may be made the husband of such a heartless young person. If I were advi- sing a young gentleman in search of a wife. I should carefully direct him to HOME DUTIES. 45 ascertain how the young lady treats her parents, especially her mother. A young lady who, not habitually, but once a month or once a year — I had almost written once in her whole life — ventures to speak unkindly, impertinently, or un- feelingly to her mother will almost cer- tainly plant her husbands pillow with thorns. In all my observations in fami- lies, I have carefully noticed this; and never yet have seen a girl tenderly soli- citous of her mother, and attentive to her wishes and desires, who did not make a wife to be honored and loved; and I never knew an uniilial girl that did not become a heartless wife and an unhappy mother, if God called her to those positions. It may be that you have had no aid from your parents. Rich or poor, they have never frit the duty of educating 46 WHAT NOW ? you. But, smitten with the love of learning, you have had the enterprise to adopt and prosecute your own plans, and now you go back to them. If proper- ly trained, how radiant will be your mind in that untutored household! You will not seek to overwhelm your parents with the terms of art and science which you have acquired. No, such pedantry would disfigure your intercourse with them, and create stronger prejudices against educa- tion. Your well-trained faculties will carry you with such graceful ease round the whole circle of filial duty, that they will be as conscious, as you are uncon- scious, of the new strength which has fallen upon you. In any case, you are to return to your parents wiser, better, stronger than you came away. And if you have neither father nor mother, strive to fill their places in society, and shed a HOME DUTIES. 47 pure light of honor on the memory of the departed. What now? That is the importunate question of your heart. And perhaps at home there are several young hearts beating with the same anxious question. The younger brothers and sisters are looking for your return with no small amount of solicitude. "Will sister be changed any?" "1 wonder if she will talk as she used to do?" "She has been with so many fine young ladies, I'm afraid I shall not know how to be- have when she comes." " But wont she tell us a sight of things !" These and a hundred similar questions and exclama- tions are made, in the nursery and on the play-ground, by the little folks at home. And in their dreams they have pictured you, and made you majestic as a queen and lovely as an angel. Go 48 WHAT NOW? home, and show them that you are nei- ther; but what for them is far better than queen or angel, you are a wiser, more considerate, kinder, and more affec- tionate sister. Lead them. Set them all examples of filial devotion. Teach them truth and honor, patience and cour- age, meekness and strength, by a varied but consistent example. Sympathize with them. Gather up the floating feel- ers of their young spirits, and bind them to your heart, Make them respect your judgment by your wise assistance in all their pleasures and studies, and make them feel that in you they have a friend whom they may always approach, even when reverence may deter them from entering the presence of their parents. And thus, as they grow older, you will exert an influence upon them which shall go on widening with the channels of their HOME DUTIES. 49 several influences, and descending in blessings upon their children and their children's children. There is one means by which you can be very useful to your younger brothers and sisters. If you are as thoughtful as you should be, you make many reviews of the several stages of your education. You perceive wherein you have been neglected, or what you have passed over too superficially. You can prevent or correct these things in the younger chil- dren. You can give them the right "start" in their studies, and direct them until they Bhall have formed proper hab- its. The most important class in an institution of learning is, perhaps, the youngest. The mode is so much more important than the subject of study ! A young person who has learned how to study may, w T ith comparative ease, ac- 50 WHAT NOW? quire all necessary learning. The drudg- ery of the schools is occasioned by a neg- lect of the first instructors to teach their pupils how to form proper habits. All this drudgery you may prevent, so far as your brothers and sisters are con- cerned ; and by so doing you will be a life-long blessing to them ; you will avert solicitudes and anxieties, feverish tears and discouraging despondency, by teach- ing a child, not his lesson, but how to acquire that lesson. Your education will certainly be considered worthless, if you cannot assume the office of teacher to the younger children. If you do your duty, the expense of their education will be lessened, the time they spend from home will be shortened, and their stay at high-schools and colleges be made so much more pleasant. There is such a sweet and hallowed power in a sister's HOME DUTIES. 51 love, that you will lose much of the hap- piness of your existence upon earth if you fail to exert it. There is another sphere of usefulness which lies very near all our educated young ladies, ami which lies too much neglected. I allude to the domestics in families. You have certainly grown up with very false views, if you have learn- ed to look upon servants as another and an inferior race of beings. They in human and immortal. They are your fellow-sinners. Ranks and orders in society are necessary for our well-being upon earth, and no man should seek to level all to the same position. God has instituted service, and in its place it is honorable. And remember that your Maker is at such an infinite elevation above all classes of society, that the dis- tance between the most menial servant 52 WHAT NOW ? and his God seems no greater than that between an earthly monarch and his eternal King ; even as we do not think of a mountain-top on our earth as being nearer to a fixed star than the bottom of the lowest valley. While it is quite proper that you should be mistress and another woman should be servant while you are both together upon earth, re- member that you will both soon stand before the throne of God, where the only distinctions will lie in the larger or small- er development of the principles of holi- ness. These thoughts should have an influence to lead you to be kind and gentle with the servants about your father's house, and to carry the same benignity with you when you assume the place of mistress in your own house, if God design this for you. You must give an account for the HOME DUTIES. 53 kind of influence you exert upon the servants when you return home. Some of them may be old. Perhaps some of them nursed you in your infancy, and perhaps, as is sometimes the case in established families, both in England and America, some of them nursed your father or your mother. They will regard you with much tenderness. In any case, going from school with all the accom- plishments which the unlearned servants will imagine you possess, whether you do or not, you will be able to exert grea t influence over them. Now how will you answer to the Father of your spirit, if you spend week after week and month after month in the pursuit of fashionably pleasure, or even in the selfish cultiva- tion of your intellect, and never spend one hour in teaching them the w r ay to <;<>wn immediate circle should most deeply interest you. it is Christian that you have charity for the whole world. As much for him who hunts in African forests as for him who trades in American cities, for her who flings her baby to the waters of the Ganges as for her who cradles her offspring'in English halls, did Jesus Christ the Saviour die. It is part of our CHRISTIAN DUTIES. 95 Christian education to cherish the mis- sionary zeal. It saves us from the belit- tling influence of selfishness and section- alism. God has ordained that man shall be saved by man's instrumentality. The church is bound to send the gospel to the ends of the earth. We have too long slumbered over this imperative duty. It is time to arouse ourselves. Let no year of your life pass without your largest possible contribution of time, thought, prayer, influence, and money to this cause which lies so near the Redeemer's heart. One reason why Christiana dis- charge their duties at home so poorly is, that they have not an enlarged sympa- thy with the race. Our people know too little of the spiritual destitution of other lands, and therefore do not value and support as they should the Christian in- stitutions in their own vicinity. You 96 WHAT NOW? are bound to make yourself acquainted with the wants of the world, and, as much as in you lies, to supply those wants. What is a Christian? What was Christ? Are we to bear his name, and have so little of his holy, sympa- thetic, self-sacrificing nature ? Make it your duty and your pleasure to arouse all around you to a keen feeling of their duty in this particular. Labor modest- ly, patiently, and perseveringly, to make the particular church to which you be- long a powerful auxiliary to the church catholic, in advancing the spiritual re- generation of the world. And now, my dear young friend, I hare endeavored, in a brief, simple, and affectionate manner, to answer the ques- tion at your heart, What now? I have merely pointed out some courses of duty which, as an educated Christian lady, CHRISTIAN DUTIES. 97 you will be bound to pursue. I have not said every thing which might be said. Your Christian intelligence will suggest many other things. If you have right principles they will come forth into leaves of gracious language and fruits of useful acts, and you will be like a tree planted by rivers of waters. You go forth with what a load of re- sponsibility! Remember the saying of your Saviour, " to whom much is given of him will much be required." You are not to be lost in the mass of uneducated women, nor in the contemptible rabble of women of fashion. It will be a sad thing for you to commence life aimless, and float down to the ocean of eternity without strength to steer yourself and aid a fellow-swimmer. You go forth to do something. You go to write a record which shall not shame you in eternity. 98 WHAT NOW I You go to leave your mark on the world, to open fountains whose waters shall flow in widening streams when you are housed with the shrouded. You are to be a lump of leaven in your family, in your church, in the world, and you must labor to leaven the whole. Be not discour- aged with the magnitude of your task. The Master asks no more than you can perform. Do all you can, and leave nothing undone which may be accom- plished. The day whose night finds you with no increase of intellectual strength, no increase of learning, no earnest strug- gle with the evil of your heart and of the world, no good deed rightly done in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, will be a lost clay — lost to you, but gone wander- ing into eternity to meet you in the hour when judgment shall be had on all your deeds and all your days. CHRISTIAN DUTIES. 99 Life is for labor, death for rest, and eternity for reward. Faint not. There is an eye above you seeing every hope, every thought, every effort. It is the eye of the tender and unwearying Labor- er for the world's redemption. He is not unmindful to forget your labor of love. Man's praise or blame is but the modification of a worm's breath — it can do you little permanent barm or good. But the approbation of Jesus is the life's end of angels and good men. Men honor success, Jesus honors intention. If you attempt great good things your reward in eternity will not be varied by any calculation of success or failure. There- fore toil on. You will be called to suffer. This is woman's lot ; the effects of woman's sin. But suffering may be beautiful: this is the effect of the grace purchased 100 WHAT NOW? by Christ's blood. You may bless youi race as much from the room of sickness as from the teacher's seat. A lesson of patience under the rod may impress a powerful soul with the truth and glory of Christianity, and send its influence to the heights and depths of human society. He that suffers patiently as much brings glory to the Saviour's name as he who labors energetically. One who has dis- charged every duty in health may, in God's name, embrace the couch of sickness as freely as successful ambition embraces the throne of power. But what has an aimless, listless, or fashionable woman of pleasure to cheer and strengthen her when sickness and death shall come? Nothing done, nothing attempted: life past a dreary desert, life to come a gloomy pit. Be not so, precious friend, but daily, plant the trees which shall CHRISTIAN DUTIES. 101 bring forth flowers to strew your sick- bed and garland your grave. " So live that when the mighty caravan, Which halts one night time in the vale of death, Shall strike its white tents for the morning march, Thou shalt mount onward to the eternal hills, Thy foot unwearied, and thy strength renewed, Like the strong eagle's, for the upward flight." APPENDIX. I have mentioned Mary Lyon, as one of the greatest of her sex. Let me ear- nestly request you to give a careful reading to every page of "The Power of Christian Benevolence Illustrated in the Life and Labors of Mary Lyon, compiled by Edward Hitchcock, D. D., LL. D "* Keep it in your library. It will proba- bly do you more good than any other merely human composition in the depart- ment of biography. If you can, visit her school at South Hadley, Mass. A much inferior woman was Lady Col- quhoun, of Scotland. Her memoir, writ- * Published by the American Tract Society. 104 APPENDIX. ten by James Hamilton, D. D., of Lon- don, is published in New York. She might be much inferior to Mary Lyon and yet be, as she was, a shining light in her circle. I make an extract from her Journal : u I have begun a new plan at our school on Sundays — a class for grown-up girls. They commit nothing to mem- ory. But I explain the Bible and cate- chism The class is flourish- ing and always increasing. Several old people attend regularly, and I hope to have more I have a pretty large congregation and it needs some nerve. But I hope to be able to go on, and I hear it is much liked. May God send a blessing!" I1