Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/29

Rh some fatal error committed for want of thought, the effects of which will run parallel with her whole life.

First of all, let education and its design form the subject of a young girl’s sober reflections, after leaving school and returning into the bosom of her family. She will not be long in arriving at this most important conclusion, that the use of the education she has received is to enable her to perform well the various duties of life, although she may not be able to see how all the branches to which she has applied herself can be made available to this end. By a very natural transition of thought, she will be led to consider the present, and to ask herself if she have not something to do in the present. The result of this will be the discovery, that, much as she has learned, her education is very far from being complete, and that, to fit her for a life of active usefulness,—the only true and only happy life,—she has much yet to learn in the process of bringing down her skill and information into every-day uses and pursuits; nay, more, that she has new knowledge to gain, and new skill to acquire, that call for continued patience, industry, and perseverance. But in all she will find this difference,—Before, there was abstract acquirement for the sake of the skill and the