“Susie’s new establishment for flower culture is a perennial delight. She has written you, so you are doubtless posted as to the money she made last winter. Everything promises well for the next. She is bound to succeed, and if she had capital, could build up a fine business; but what is better than all, is the fact that she has outgrown all her heart-aches, and is really and truly happy. See, my girl, what we have done for her! When we remember how ignorant she was, how deficient in any moral or other training, and therefore how certain to be guided by her emotions, if we had ‘passed by on the other side,’ like the rest, she might have been damned beyond salvation; yet still I doubt it after all. She reads a great deal, and is the best patron of the new circulating library. ‘Give me a list of books,’ she said to me, ‘that you know are good. If I select for myself I shall waste time, and I want to make up for what I have lost.’ Some people would call this lack of individuality, but the fact is, it is real wisdom. Life is too short to read all the books of unknown and new authors. Let them sift through the ten million general readers of the country. If anything is too big to go through the sieve, there will be a noise about it, and then it is time for the discriminate to take it up. Susie devours history, biography, travels, and entertains me greatly by her fresh comments upon them. She has not yet complained of my selection being too serious for her. You see, I keep a copy of my lists, and when I think the pabulum too nutritious, I throw in a few lollypops in the shape of novels, though I don’t mean to include all novels under that head. Have you read George Eliot’s last? I ask, because I would have you not only read, but read very carefully, everything she writes. In my opinion she is the closest observer and the profoundest thinker among women to-day. Susie has an appreciation of her that is delightful to me. You know, of course, that I am teaching Susie French and natural philosophy. Upon my word, I think I missed my calling. I should have been a teacher of girls—women I should say, for girls are only interesting because they are women _in posse_.