might even vote in the way you believe to be best; but
do not allow yourself to be violent or to denounce everybody whose
judgment differs from yours.

2. Try to be enough at leisure to observe little courtesies. Hard
workers are in danger of being irritable and hurried and careless of the
trifles which add so much to the beauty and dignity of life. Of course
my injunction includes some social life. We get much of our best
intellectual as well as moral life from contact with others.

3. Keep open every avenue to beauty. You have no time to study, but read
a few beautiful and noble sentences every day. You have no time to
practice music; then it is doubly necessary to hear all you can and the
best that you can. And you can always look at beauty. There is always a
strip of blue sky with its stars at night. And there are few who could
not see a beautiful sunset almost every day in the year if they made it
a happy duty to look at it. I have often thought that any one who would
persist in seeing this one vision every day would be lifted up above
most of the turmoil of life.

VIII.

THE ESSENTIALS OF A LADY.

Within the last twenty-five years the wish to be considered a lady has
spread so among all classes of American women as to have become almost
ridiculous, as in the authentic case of the individual who presented
herself at the front door of a fine house, and describing herself as an
ash-_lady_, inquired for the _woman_ of the house. It has been so often
repeated that: "The rank is but the guinea's stamp," and that "A man's a
man for a' that," that all the ash-ladies and wash-ladies of the land
have hastily concluded that the term "lady" stands for nothing
substantial.

I will not say that a washer-woman may not be a lady. It is certainly
possible for her to have all the essentials of a lady. But such a case
is so rare that I think we are justified in taking the contrary for
granted till we have proof of the fact. Not there are washer-women so
truthful, unselfish, and noble in character that they are far superior
as women to many whom we may fairly call ladies. Such women usually have
self-respect enough to understand that they lose rather than gain
dignity in claiming to be anything they are not. The essential point in
life is not the being considered a lady. It is not even to be a lady,
though that is a beautiful thing. A woman is like a vigorous plant, with
strong roots firmly fixed in the soil and abunda