There is a caution in these words which every young woman should heed. Life is not play, for it has its solemn responsibilities, its sacred duties; and eternity lies beyond this little span. I call you to earnestness, moral earnestness. Determine to make the most and the best of your life. Get an education to fit you for life's duties, even though it must be gotten in the little fragments of time that you can redeem from busy days. Life is too short to crowd everything into it. Something must always be left out. Better leave out many of your amusements and recreations, than grow up into womanhood ignorant and with undisciplined intellectual powers. Train your mind to think. Set your ideal before you,--rich, beautiful womanhood,--and bend all your energy to reach it. Some of these letters speak of the common _talk_ of girls as being largely idle gossip; criticisms of absent people; unkind words about persons whom the ladies would meet with warm professions of friendship and fervent kisses if they were to come in a minute later. Dear girls, I plead for sincerity in speech. "Do not yield to the passion for miserable gossip which is so common. Talk about things, not people. Do not malign or backbite your absent friend. What is friendship worth if the moment the person is out of sight the tongue that has professed affection becomes a poisoned fang, and the lips which gave their warm kiss utter the word of ridicule, or sneer, or aspersion? Better be dumb than have the gift of speech to be used in the miserable idle words, insincerities, and backbitings too common in modern society. Surely something better can be found to talk about; if not, utter silence is more heaven-like. A stupid girl who cannot talk at all is better far than a chattering girl who can talk of nothing good or useful. "Find thou always time to say some earnest word between the idle talk."