The Misses Prim may be thirty or forty years old, or more. What matters it? Their mission lies chiefly among the young, and thoughtless though these may be, they are loving and have ten times more gratitude in their souls than grown-up people. Alas! though, I may be addressing some who have but little time to help those around them, little time even to read; theirs only to work, to long, and sometimes to weep. I do in my heart feel for such as these; but the very fact that they do long for something better to come shows, I think, that there is a better world than this, and that this life is but probationary. It is their mission then to work, and to try to do so willingly, for methinks duty well performed is a reward in itself. BEAUTY'S MISSION. Beauty's mission is a noble one, and if kept well apart from pride and frivolity, it is a self-ennobling one. Beauty has been called a fatal gift. It is so only when the possessor thereof has no other attractions. Every beautiful girl should possess refinement, and by this I do not mean accomplishments that can be shown to advantage in a drawing-room. No, but refinement of mind or soul. She ought to be well read, though far indeed from being a blue-stocking. She ought to be herself a poet at heart, a lover of nature and of God's animals, His trees and His flowers. She ought to be a good but not a garrulous conversationalist; the sentences that leave her lips ought to flow like the murmur and ripple of a sparkling fountain. Forced conversation has no reality about it, and anyone can see it does not come from the heart. Beauty should be musical. Alas! it is not always so. I may go further and say it is too often automatical. This is the result of a forced musical education. Beauty should never play what she cannot feel. If she feels, so shall others around her, and the chords will touch the heart. A beautiful woman who can play the violin so as to bring tears to the listener's eyes, possesses a power that nothing on this dull earth of ours can excel. And a beauty like that which I so feebly paint has a deal to be proud of, though she ought not to be vain. Vanity only proves narrowness of soul, a mind with no breadth of beam. “She moves a goddess and she looks a queen.” True enough, yet the greatest of beauties are not simply there for show. For her a nobler part is retained, and ere many years are over her head she ought to be as noble-minded and beautiful a matron as she now is a maiden. Yes, and if health and beauty go hand-in-hand, with modesty and virtue in their train, this great kingdom of ours will never need to lower its flag to any combination in the world. I say, then, to every girl-reader I have, “It is well to be beautiful.” GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY.