es, it is a pity, but you are not going to teach, and you will have to
do the best you can. You had better make up your mind, before you begin
life, as to what sort of woman you want to be, and then cut your coat
according to your cloth, for if you begin by wanting to keep up
everything, you will probably end by dropping everything, in despair."

"Well, I want to keep up Latin and Greek and French and German, and
Algebra and Geometry and Chemistry and Mechanics, as well as English
subjects."

"And seeing that your day will probably be only twenty-four hours long, I
fear 'want will be your master'! If you had a strong turn for any one of
these subjects, I should say keep it up, by all means; but as you have
not, I have very strong doubts whether you will find mathematics or
classics much use to you. You know enough to take them up again if ever
you wanted to help a beginner."

"Then do you think Latin and Greek and mathematics no good for a woman?"

"Certainly not; you will read your newspaper, and the books of the day, in
quite a different way now that your mind has been trained by these
subjects, but you do not need to keep the scaffolding up when your house
is built!"

"It does seem a pity!"

"Well, I do not want to debar you from these subjects if you really enjoy
them; there would be a reason for going on, if they were intense pleasure
to you, but I suspect you do them as 'lessons,' and, if so, you had better
forsake them for things that directly tend to make you useful."

"Oh, cooking and nursing, and that sort of thing."

"Yes; but I was not thinking of that sort of thing. I meant things that
bring you closer to others; Madame Schwetchine says that every fresh
sorrow we endure is like learning a fresh language, because it enables us
to speak to a fresh set of souls in their own tongue, and to sympathize.
Every fresh thing that you learn brings you in sympathy with a fresh set
of people. It gives pleasure and ease to a stranger to find that some one
in his new circle knows his old home, and we can try to be at home in the
mental country of each person we meet, so as to be able to respond to
them. If you are a genius you can have your own country, and wait in it,
till you meet some fellow-countryman; but as you only want to be an
ordinary woman, 'not too bright and good for human nature's daily food,'
you will give far more pleasure to others, and widen and strengthen your
own mind far more, by being able to