The flowers have what each of us should have, individuality. We do not wish the girls in a school to be alike in everything. One day last October I sat on the platform of a woman's college during the opening exercises, and in the bright morning watched the long lines of girls march into the chapel to the sound of the piano. Two by two they came, dark girls and fair girls, plump girls and thin girls, tall girls and short girls, as sweet a band as I ever saw, all alert and alive and eager, and looking as if they never had an ache or a pain, as girls ought to look who have learned that health and vigor help to make successful students. They were not like coins stamped in a mint and precisely alike, though their college was giving each of them its own stamp of culture and refinement. One may carry this stamp, as the flower its perfume, and not lose the particular quality of mind and heart which is her own special distinction. Keeping one's own individuality, one may yet gain what is best in her school life and hold it. This is a thoughtful talk for my older girls, and I am going now to give them three rather long words, which they may use as pegs on which to hang reflections of their own, or points round which ideas may cluster. One is development. If you cut an apple through the circumference, as you cut an orange, you will see in clear outline around the starlike centre made by the seeds the shape of the blossom. The fruit has grown from the flower, and the flower's shape is in the heart of the fruit. The fruit developed little by little through summer days and winter days, but the flower gave it the start. Take the little thought and use it, and if you have a gift or grace--a taste for housekeeping, cooking, sewing, painting, or reading--develop it by use and study and taking pains. My next long word is responsibility. It means, as we all know, the answering when we are called, answering to our names. The responsible person can be trusted. Not long ago, in New York city, a fire broke out in the upper stories of a great apartment-house. Two young women, one, a young lady visiting the family in a certain home on the sixth floor of the house, the other a maid in the same home, were confronted suddenly with black volumes of smoke, red tongues of flame, and no way of escape but by the iron ladder that hung along the side of the house. There were two little children there and some valuable papers, and though the young women could not save everything, they took the children and the papers down the fire-escape with calmness and courage. They were _responsible_. My last word is consecration. It is a very sacred word, and I leave you to weave your own sweet fancies around it. We must be consecrated to the best possible ideal, we must fill every day with noble work. ANNE B.--Write a formal note of thanks in the third person. It is always proper to return thanks for courtesies of every description.