ng and half-trained servants, girls inherit a
depressed and morbid tendency to call life "hard."

The spirit of the age is also against them. They do not have the help
which comes from a trusting religious spirit. The "Conflict of the Ages"
has penetrated to the heart of almost every household, and care is too
seldom taken to save that love of God and trust in his Fatherly care,
upon which the comfort and happiness of the young so much depend. It
seems to me that very few parents realize this. If a girl has a loving
mother, it is not enough. She needs, still farther, the consciousness of
that sustaining Power which holds both her and the universe in its
embrace. If she has not a loving mother, how can she endure life without
this support?

But let us suppose that the teacher has met and vanquished these
difficulties--she has enemies still at hand that our ancestors never
knew. The girls whom she teaches live in high houses, piled storey upon
storey, so that three or four flights of stairs come between them and
the open air--between them and healthful play. The crowd of people who
go annually to Europe, and bring home its follies instead of its charms,
have succeeded in changing our simple midday meal into a dinner of many
courses, eaten under the gaslight. At this meal the young girl finds
food very different from the roast mutton, and bread and butter eaten
daily by her English sister at the same age. She has tea and coffee at
other meals, and probably a glass of wine at this, especially if she is
thought to be studying hard. In the afternoon, she has no longer simple,
happy life in the open air. Although her ear be so deficient that she
may hammer all the afternoon over an exercise that she will not
recognize when she hears it well played at a concert the same evening,
she is kept at her instrument as if all her salvation of body and soul
lay in the keys of the piano.

The irritability which bad habits, bad food, and the want of fresh air
develop, needs the counterpoise of a fresh excitement--so a German, the
opera, or a tragedy, occupies her evening hours. Three or four days in
the week, at least, she is up till midnight, and rises just in time to
get to school at nine. She never stands in the cool evening air to see
the red sun sink below the hills; she misses the holy calm of the early
morning, which falls upon a flushed and heated life as its dews fall on
the flowers. Dissipation, either mental or physical, crow