This is but a feeble picture of the frightful condition of a mind starved for want of solid and wholesome food, and poisoned by the empty frothings of vanity and passion. Curiosity is the constant companion of this mediocrity of the mind and poverty of the heart. In order to avoid this fatal rock, no pains should be spared, and if, unfortunately, you have already drank at its poisoned sources, hasten to use every available means to arrest its ravages. To insure success, do not amuse yourself with lopping off the branches of the evil, allowing the root to remain, do at once what is essential: feed your mind and heart with a genuine love for the true and beautiful. A frivolous woman is invariably curious, and a curious woman always finishes by becoming the dupe and victim of her curiosity. To overcome an inordinate love for sights and news you must accustom the mind's eye to feast on the panoramic beauties of nature, and confine yourself to the company of persons of your own age, in whom you remark an elevated mind and heart,--lovers of what is truly good and grand. Curiosity has its source, also, in another defect which becomes daily more and more prevalent--it is a want of forethought and reflection, arising from a volatile and frivolous mind. Few, indeed, are lovers of the interior life; all seem to be bent on parading the mind and heart, the imagination and senses. Now, when man has not learned the art of living and conversing with himself, he becomes wearisome and sometimes dangerous to himself when alone; because the mind, not knowing how to occupy itself, and not finding in its own resources the thoughts that elevate and nourish it, is obliged, in order to avoid lonesomeness, to dwell upon images which at least distract and weaken it, and not unfrequently disturb the peace of the heart. Religion, always inspired by God in the choice and formation of the terms which it employs to convey the ideas that it wishes to impress upon the heart, has invented two words, which admirably express the meaning of the concentration of the faculties of the soul,--in other words, that society or cohabitation of man with himself--they are _self-composure and recollection._ These words express that state or power of the will by which it holds complete control over all the faculties of the soul; so that sensibility can have no command over any of their operations. Thus shielded from this turbulent disturber they are enabled to labor peacefully and efficiently in their interior province or the soul.