"Dear E----: ... I think it is good for young people to have some variety in life. I suffered much from the want of it; and I trust that you have too much good sense and right feeling to be unreasonable in your wishes, or in any measure unfitted for the duties and enjoyments of home by the indulgence. I know it has formerly been a great trial of your patience to pass from the irresponsible position of a visitor, to the occupations and responsibilities of home. But I trust, as you grow older and look at life more and more with a clear appreciation of its use and end, you will take more and more delight in the consciousness of living for some useful object; and, despite unpleasant accompaniments, find, in using all your powers for the good of others, a pleasure beyond any to be derived from a mere indulgence of taste. We cannot, and we had certainly better not, if we could, choose our own lot in life; we know not in that matter what is best for us. It is happily under the guidance of a more perfect wisdom than we can attain, and we may rest in faith that our position in life is unquestionably the best one for us, or it would not have been appointed. Therefore, dear E., remember that He who appointed all 'knows what is in man,' and in wisdom and love adapts our trials to our wants; and the very fact that such and such things are particularly hard to bear, is a proof that we need to cultivate just those virtues which would make it easy to us to bear them." * * * * *