Some of your sex are willing to admit the force of this argument when applied to men. A man, after graduating, is expected of course to continue his studies. His whole profession is one continued study. But somehow, it is thought, this truth does not hold good for women. Let me hope that _you_ at least will not harbor such a notion. Whatever may be said of "women's rights," one right certainly, and one duty, is to keep yourself abreast of the other sex in continued mental growth and culture, and in general intelligence. If you would awaken true respect in my sex, and I hold it a not unworthy ambition, you must in this matter do as we do, at least as those of us do who are worth your consideration at all. You must perseveringly, every year, add to your intellectual acquisitions. You must continue steadily to grow in knowledge and mental power. Do not cease your studies, because you have ceased going to school. Manage to have some elegant accomplishment or acquisition always in hand. A woman who is wise in this matter, never passes her prime. I speak not, of course, of the decrepitude of old age and of the decay of the faculties. But so long as the faculties remain unimpaired, a woman may become, and should aim to become, increasingly attractive, as she advances in years. Poets sing of sweet sixteen. Let me assure you, a woman may be charming at sixty. Mrs. Madison even at seventy was the most attractive woman in Washington. In society, how soon one feels the difference between a person who reads, and one who does not read. Two ladies may be of the same age. They may dress alike. They may have the same advantages of person. They may move in the same social circle. Yet you will not have been ten minutes in their society, though the conversation has been on only the most common topics of the day, before you will feel that the one woman, though at thirty or forty, is still only a superannuated school-girl, with even less resources than when she left the seminary, while the other is a delightful companion for persons of any age, with ready knowledge for whatever turn the conversation may take, and so abounding in resources as not even to be open to the temptation of making a display of them. The one can talk only so long as the conversation turns on dress, gossip, or the discussion of private character. In listening to the talk of such a woman, you hardly hear a sentence which is not based upon personalities. Her mind has not been fed and nurtured from day to day with beautiful and noble thoughts, with history and science and general knowledge. She may be amiable. She may have personal beauty. But you find her empty and vapid, and you weary of her, in spite of the very best intentions of being interested. How different the woman who, in spite of social exactions, and even of accumulating domestic duties, and of the time-consuming tax of dress, still keeps her mind fresh and growing, by means of reading and culture,--who is ever adding