IV. In last Fors, though I thought I knew my ‘Old Mortality’ well enough, I carelessly wrote ‘Elspeth,’ for ‘Elizabeth,’ (meaning Bessie Maclure); and the misprint ‘Arannah’ for ‘Araunah’ escaped my eyes three times over. The more grotesque one of ‘changes’ for ‘charges,’ in p. 168, line 25, was I suppose appointed by Fors to chastise me for incurable flirtation. I wish I knew who these two schoolgirls are, whom I’ve got to finish my letter to if I can, this time. My dears, will you please, for I can’t rewrite what I’ve said so often, read, when you have opportunity, the letter to a young lady in Fors 34, pp. 29, 30. [48] Respecting the third article in that letter, I have now a few words to add; (read also, if you can, what is said of the Word of God, in Letters 45 and 46). I told you in last Fors that you would have great difficulty in getting leave from English society to obey Christ. Fors has since sent me, in support of this statement, a paper called ‘The Christian,’—the number for Thursday, May 11,—in the fifteenth page of which is an article on young ladies headed “What can they do?” from which I take the following passage:— “There have been times of special prayer for young men and women. Could there not be also for the very large class of young ladies who do not go out into society? They have no home duties to detain them, as many in a humbler condition; they have hours and hours of leisure, and know not how to spend them—partly from need of being directed, but more so from the prejudices and hindrances in their way. Their hearts are burning to do something for Christ, but they are not allowed, partly because it is considered ‘improper,’ and for a variety of reasons. “There is a cry on every side for labourers. There are numbers longing to respond; if not wholly to dedicate their lives, at least a portion of their days, to active Christian service, and only a wave of united prayer can throw these objections aside, and free the large band who are so willing. “A bright young Christian came to me this week. She is tired of meetings to which she is constantly taken, but never allowed to work in the inquiry-room at them,—hindered from taking up the least bit of work, till at last she cannot even ask for it. Almost to ‘kill time,’ she has taken up a secular corresponding agency.” Now that it is ‘considered improper’ by the world that you should do anything for Christ, is entirely true, and always true; and therefore it was that your Godfathers and Godmothers, in your name, renounced the “vain pomp and glory of the world,” with all covetous desires of the same—see baptismal service—(I wonder if you had pretty names—won’t you tell me?) but I much doubt if you, either privately or from the pulpit of your doubtless charming church, have ever been taught what the “vain pomp and glory of the world” was.