t chance
is to have one hobby at a time and ride that to death, and then try
another, becoming at last two, three, or four-sided, though never
completely rounded. If that be the case, it seems to me a good thing to
choose some of our hobbies at least from among the subjects for which we
have most taste and talent. Now where the opportunities for culture have
been great, it often happens that girls grow discouraged. They see how
far away they are from perfection, and they conclude they are good for
nothing. Do not yield to such morbid feelings. Make your own estimate of
yourself, without regard to your wishes. You do in your heart know what
you can do well if you are willing to work.

Make your estimate silently. It will probably be too high, but you will
work in the right line. Then let half your work be in the direction in
which you think you may make your life outwardly effective; for
instance, if you are a Darwin let it be in the line of natural science.
Let the other half of your work be constantly varied. Suppose you have
chosen history as the study for a life-time, take as a companion study
something new every year,--first a science, then art, then literature,
then mathematics, then a language, etc., etc. For the fruit of culture
is to be and not to do; and what we are, intellectually at least,
depends even more on the breadth of knowledge which helps us to balance
conflicting judgments than on special knowledge which gives us accurate
judgment in details. Even in the moral world, are not the finest
characters those in whom many virtues are balanced rather than those in
which one virtue is distorted by being allowed exclusive sway? It is a
great thing to be generous, but not to be wasteful; it is great to be
gentle, but not to be weak.

The philosophers tell us, however, that all things move in an ascending
spiral. We do in order to be. What we are bears unconscious fruit in
what we do. A woman who is cultivated in the true sense exerts a
constant influence for good. One rich woman says, "I will not live to
myself," and gives clothing to ragged children. Another rich woman says
the same thing, and studies history and poetry and comes silently to
just conclusions about the relative value of clothes and thought. She
cannot be unjust to her smartly dressed maid, and her daily life lifts
her maid into a new moral atmosphere; or her gently expressed judgments
on all things are so unswervingly on the side of truth and