other has not given any special orders. You are
responsible for your own life, and it is horribly easy to slide into a
slack, pleasure-seeking life which will eat all the good out of you.

You must not fill the day with rules and employments so that people feel
you always engaged, yet, though you must seem disengaged, you must have a
real purpose underneath. You must be free to idle about after breakfast
while your mother or the visitors are settling the day's employments, and
yet you should aim at always having something to show for your morning,

"Something accomplished, something done."

It is more difficult to live an ordinary idle life well than a
hard-working one, because it rests entirely with you whether you put any
salt into your day, and because it is your duty to do much as other people
do, while at the same time, underneath, you must keep to your standard of
Right and Wrong.

But, suppose a girl wants to arrange her own individual life on the best
possible lines. Had you better make your plan, and begin at once?

There is great danger, if you wait, that your good resolutions will die
away, and you will never begin. And yet, when you first leave, you want a
little time to feel quite free, and your people like to feel you are quite
free to enjoy yourself.

There is a great deal to be said for beginning at once, but I am not sure
about it!

If you feel that you will _never_ begin good ways unless you do so at
once, then begin! But I am not sure that I should advise you to make your
Resolution at once, though I should like you to make your Plan. I should
like you to plan your day while you are here, and write it out: you will
not do much with Resolutions unless you write them. Plan what time you
will get up and go to bed (you should have a conscience about both);
settle a plan of your reading,--what books you want to read during the
first year, what poetry to learn, what subjects to study. Plan it all out,
and then seal it up, and keep it till Christmas comes. Then think over it,
and pray over it, before New Year's Day, and then start your definite
resolutions with the new year.

But are you to fritter away the time between this and then? No, carry out
your ideas of reading sensible books and doing kind things for friends and
poor people, and saying your prayers and reading the Bible, and write down
every day exactly how much you did. Let your resolution be to keep a
record of these months, rather th