"Your expressions of discouragement and anxiety about yourself touch me very much. I can enter fully into all your feelings, for at your age I was not only separated from the loved circle and influences of home, for a time, but I lost for ever my chief earthly dependence for aid and happiness in my mother's death. Thus, being left to myself, I was led to a self-inspection and care of my own character, which do not usually come for many years after. I know all the trials that beset one's path at your age, for I have had deep experience of them; and I can say with confidence to you, that they may all be overcome by a resolute will, united to a true spirit of _humility_. Not, perhaps, in one year or two; but I do know that, by the persevering use of the means which God has placed within our reach, in reliance upon and earnest seeking of the aid which he will give, we shall make progress in the Christian life, the only life which can give us any satisfaction.... Seek the _truth_ in your own character, and see it in others. Fix for yourself a high standard of excellence, and never 'tire nor stop to rest,' until you have put yourself in the way to attain it. Stop not then; there is no stopping in this world (or in another, I believe).... Look your great difficulties full in the face; seek not to gloss them over, or find excuses for them. You have them as the means of excellence, by giving you something to do, a mode of applying Christian principle. Use them as such, and faint not.... "One thing I would suggest. You have been in the habit from earliest childhood, and I trust are still, of praying before you close your eyes to sleep. I am not sure that you have always done the same when you first awake in the morning. I know that much good may be derived from thus commencing the day with some private devotional exercise. The time given to it must of course depend upon circumstances; yet there cannot but be, under any arrangement, opportunity for at least the offering of a petition for light and strength, to meet the duties and temptations of the day on which you are entering, and a thought and resolution in regard to some particular fault to which you know you may be prone. I cannot but believe, that, when the day is so commenced, there is less danger of yielding to temptation than if no such act were performed."