If you wish to preserve in all their integrity the faculties of your soul; if you would not have your life ruled by the caprice of the imagination; contract at an early age the salutary and happy custom of making your meditation. Set apart a special time for it every day, let it be practical, having for its object the spiritual progress of your soul, the sanctification of your life. Lay out in God's presence what you have to do every day, recall to mind the places, persons and things that have been to you an occasion of sin, or a help in the exercise of virtue, in order to avoid the evil accruing from the one source, and increase the influence arising from the other. Never recline your head upon your pillow before having rendered an exact account of the day you have just finished, like the merchant who, every night, tots up his loss and gain, to see what has been the result of the day's transactions. The next day, with the double armour of experience and resolve, you will be better able to avoid what proved noxious before, as well as to do the good that you had omitted. By thus acting you will give to your life a sure direction, a powerful impetus in the accomplishment of all that is worthy of your glorious destiny. CHAPTER XIX. OBEDIENCE TO PARENTS. In the natural order of things, man, after having obeyed his parents in his youth, becomes in turn the head of another family which he must govern by the authority of his word and example. God has given to woman another vocation. She obeys from her childhood, and obedience becomes more necessary to her as she advances in years; for when she quits the paternal roof for the one of her choice, it is still to obey and be directed by the will of another. But in this second moiety of her life she often finds the practice of obedience more difficult and painful than it was when she lived with her parents. More than once has the young woman, allured by the deceitful charms of a false liberty, left with a secret joy the paternal roof, hoping thereby to be delivered from the duty of obedience which weighed so heavily on her heart. But, alas! she has often been obliged to regret those days as the happiest of her life, when the tender solicitude of a mother rendered submission sweet and easy. God, whose Providence is infinitely wise, has disposed all things in such a way that each epoch of life is a preparation to that which follows; strengthened by the labors of the past, we are fitted for those of the future, and prepared for the accomplishment of the duties of to-day by our fidelity to obligations less difficult of yesterday; we are thus imperceptibly and safely conducted by this graded scale to the end for which we were created.