o end in hopeless ennui and nervous
troubles. It should be thoroughly understood by parents and guardians
that no matter what the girl's circumstances may be, she ought always
to have an abundance of employment. The ideas of obligation and of
duty should not be discarded when school and college life cease. The
well-to-do girl should be encouraged to take up some definite
employment which would fill her life and provide her with interests
and duties. Any other arrangement tends to make the time between
leaving school or college and a possible marriage not only a wasted
time but also a seed-time during which a crop is sown of bad habits,
laziness of body, and slackness of mind, that subsequently bear bitter
fruit. It is quite time for us to recognise that unemployment and
absence of duties is as great a disadvantage to the rich as it is to
the poor; the sort of employment must necessarily differ, but the
spirit in which it is to be done is the same.

One point that one would wish to emphasise with regard to all
adolescents is that although occupation for the whole day is most
desirable, hard work should occupy but a certain proportion of the
waking hours. For any adolescent, or indeed for any of us to attempt
to work hard for twelve or fourteen hours out of the twenty-four is to
store up trouble. It is not possible to lay down any hard and fast
rule as to the length of hours of work, because the other factors in
the problem vary so greatly. One person may be exhausted by four
hours of intellectual effort, whereas another is less fatigued by
eight; and further, the daily occupations vary greatly in the demand
that they make on attention and on such qualities as reason, judgment,
and power of initiation. Those who teach or learn such subjects as
mathematics, or those who are engaged in such occupations as
portrait-painting and the higher forms of musical effort, must
necessarily take more out of themselves than those who are employed in
feeding a machine, in nursing a baby, or in gardening operations.

CHAPTER V.

THE FINAL AIM OF EDUCATION.

The great problem before those who have the responsibility for the
training of the young is that of preparing them to take their place in
the world as fathers, mothers, and citizens, and among the fundamental
duties connected with this responsibility must come the placing before
the eyes of the young people high ideals, attractive examples, and the
securing to them the mea