Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/82

 68 brothers, or husbands, but must stand or fall alone. Upon their learning to stand depends much of the material comfort, as well as the finer morality, of the future.

And surely, the first and most needful lesson for them to acquire is to take themselves and their work with simplicity, to be a little less self-conscious, and a little more sincere. In all walks of life, in all kinds of labor, this is the beginning of excellence, and proficiency follows in its wake. We talk so much about thoroughness of training, and so little about singleness of purpose. We give to every girl in our public schools the arithmetical knowledge which enables her to stand behind a counter and cast up her accounts. That there is something else which we do not give her is sufficiently proven by her immediate adoption of that dismal word, "saleslady," with its pitiful assumption of what is not, its pitiful disregard of dignity and worth. I own I am dispirited when I watch the more ambitious girls who attend our great schools of manual training and industrial art. They are being taught on generous and noble lines. The elements of beauty and appropriateness enter into their