om their last fifty years of life,
and who therefore can teach her nothing, she does not feel any impulse
to offer reverence to mere years. But if gray hairs be honorable,
either for matured wisdom, extensive information, or practical piety,
she is generally inclined to give that best of all homage, the
reverence which springs from knowledge and affection, and which is a
much better thing than the mere forms of respect traditionally offered
to old age.

It is also said that the American girl is a very vain girl, fond of
parading her beauty, freedom, and influence. But vanity is not a bad
quality, if it does not run to excess. It is the ounce of leaven in a
girl's character, and does a deal of good work for which it seldom
gets any credit. For a great deed a great motive is necessary; but
how numberless are the small social and domestic kindnesses for which
vanity is a sufficient force, and which would be neglected or ill-done
without its influence! As long as a girl's vanity does not derive its
inspiration from self-love there is no necessity for her to wear
sackcloth to humiliate it. We have all known women without vanity, and
found them unpleasant people to know.

There is one fault of the American girl which is especially her fault,
and which ought not to be encouraged or palliated although it is
essentially the shadow of some of her greatest excellences--the fault
of being in too great a hurry at all the turning-points of her life.
When she is in the nursery she aches to go to school. When she is a
schoolgirl, she is impatient to put on long dresses and become a young
lady. As soon as this fact is accomplished, she feels there is not a
moment to lose in choosing either a career or a husband. She is always
in a hurry about the future, and so frequently takes the wrong turn at
the great events of life. She leaves school too soon; she leaves home
too soon; she does everything at a rush, and does not do it as well as
if she "made haste slowly."

But what a future lies before these charmingly brilliant American
girls, if they are able to take the fullest possession of it! The
great obstacle in this achievement is the apparently wholesome opinion
that education is sufficient. But the very best education will fall
short of its privileges if it be not accompanied with that moral
training which we call discipline. Discipline is self-denial in all
its highest forms; it teaches the excellent mean between license and
repres