[Illustration: AN ANTIQUE FÊTE. _From the Painting in the Salon by P. L. VAGNIER._] [Illustration: THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER VOL. XX.—NO. 993.] JANUARY 7, 1899. [PRICE ONE PENNY.] SELF-CULTURE FOR GIRLS. [Illustration: ASPIRATION.] _All rights reserved._] PART I. There is, perhaps, no word in the present day which has been more frequently used and abused than “culture.” It has come so readily to the lips of modern prophets, that it has acquired a secondary and ironical significance. Some of our readers may have seen a clever University parody (on the _Heathen Chinee_) describing the encounter of two undergraduates in the streets of Oxford. One, in faultless attire, replies proudly to the other’s inquiry where he is going— “I am bound for some tea and tall culture.” He is, in fact, on the way to a meeting of the Browning Society, and when a Don hurries up to tell him the society has suddenly collapsed, great is the lamentation! Probably the society in question deserved no satire at all; but there is a sort of “culture for culture’s sake” which does deserve to be held up to ridicule. We find nothing to laugh at, however, but a very real pathos, in the letters that are reaching us literally from all quarters of the globe; and we long to help the writers, as well as those who have similar needs and longings unexpressed. “How can I attain self-culture?” is the question asked in varying terms, but with the same refrain. Girls, after schooldays are past, wake up to find themselves in a region of vast, dimly-perceived possibilities: “Moving about in worlds not realised.” More to be pitied is the lot of those who have not had any schooldays at all worth speaking of, and who are awaking to their own mental poverty—poverty, while there is wealth all about them which they cannot make their own. Their case is like that of the heir to some vast estates, who cannot enjoy them, because he cannot prove his title. What, then, is this much talked-of culture? There are several things which it is _not_. To begin with, it is not a superficial smattering of certain accomplishments. It is not a general readiness to talk about the reviews one has read of new books. It is not the varnish acquired from associating day by day with well-educated and urbane people. It is not development to an enormous extent in one direction only. It is not attending one course of University Extension Lectures. It is not the knack of cramming for examinations, and of passing them with _éclat_. All these elements may enter into culture, but they are not culture itself. It is a harder matter to define culture than to say what it is not. As we write these words, our eye falls on the saying of a well-known prelate, reported in the _Times_ of the day: “General culture—another name for sympathetic interest in the world of human intelligence.” This sounds rather highflown and difficult, but we may add three more definitions—