What may be called study--making abstracts or taking notes of what one has read--is not considered proper for women, especially in country towns. Reading is hardly permissible and only within restricted limits. A lady of my acquaintance incurred general censure because, during the first year of her married life, she did not receive or make visits before four o'clock, that she might reserve a few hours for study, in accordance, moreover, with her husband's wishes. Young girls should regard the close of their first studies as the commencement of a life-long work. Young women should, in the very beginning of married life, establish study as one of the duties of existence. Later, they are engrossed with the education of their children, and can no longer work to please themselves. But even then, the precious habit will cling to them as an inestimable consolation to be enjoyed in every leisure hour. Above all, it remains to fill the void that becomes so irksome when children escape from the mother's guidance, and she once more has freedom and leisure without youth, its joys or its energy. Labor is a faithful friend that adapts itself to the age and disposition of every being who takes it as a companion for life. That women may learn to value habits of industry, it is incumbent on us to convince young girls that their education does not end at eighteen, and that their first ball-dress has not, like a bachelor's degree, the virtue of giving to learning its perfect consummation. At that age they have barely information enough to enable them to study alone. Leading-strings are no longer needed in their education, and that is all. They are simply capable of continuing their studies, and of enjoying the pleasure of individual exertion. If a girl could be made to believe this, a serious and earnest future would be secured to her. But the present custom demands that she should study French and history until she is fifteen, and from fifteen to eighteen, piano-playing and drawing. Then comes a pink dress, the crowning glory of her education, the great day so often dreamed of. She goes into society and marries, determined to leave work behind her in accordance with universal practice. {219} This is one of the joys of marriage--to do nothing--and so she wastes a period most precious in a woman's life, a period when she has leisure, and that flame that youth and happiness alone can kindle; expansion of soul, the illumined eyes of the heart, _illuminates oculos cordis_, as St. Paul says, giving to toil facility, impetus, horizon, power. But so it is; all must be lost, squandered, sunk in those early years, even happiness! Study would have a secret power to draw this young creature from the whirl of life, and give her the calmness and recollection she so much needs, if merely to enjoy her blessings; but no, everything must be frittered away and destroyed.