Early Rising ought to be on your list of resolutions. Some find it best to name a certain hour, but then, if they are not called punctually, they feel the resolution broken, and they very likely lie on slothfully. I think it is best to resolve to get up either five or ten minutes after you wake, or are called; look at your watch, and jump up when the time comes.
When you are up, your Rule of Prayer is the first thing to think of and to act on.
And when you are dressed (carefully and prettily dressed), and your soul is dressed in God's armour, what are you going to do with the new day God has given you?
First carry out some duty in the house; next see to your own improvement, not as a self-ending pleasure, but in order to make yourself a useful woman, to train you for better work in the future.
Reading is not the only kind of such training, but it is one of the best kinds and gives you new ideas. I advise you to try for half an hour a day, and to keep a list of the books you read:[1] make an abstract of a sensible book once in three months: sandwich your English novels with foreign ones: keep a sensible book on hand and, alternately with books you fancy, read something a little above you: take up some special subject every three or six months and read several books on it, or else read through the books on my lists: read no novels before luncheon.
It is seldom safe to fix the hour very decidedly; some one interrupts you, and then you feel the rule broken and you get discouraged!
Make a point of being occupied, keep some needlework on hand, idleness leads to silly thoughts and self-indulgence. Do not be out-of-doors all day; have something indoors to show for yourself. Feminine occupations have a good result on the character, and help you to be quiet and recollected, to be the womanly woman who makes a real Home for her father and brothers. As Roger Ascham is reported by Landor to have said to Lady Jane Grey, "exercise that beauteous couple, the mind and body, much and variously; but at home, at home, Jane! indoors, and about things indoors."
Mr. Lowell said that most men act as if they had sealed orders not to be opened till middle life! I do not want you to waste your life like that, I want you to feel that you have a definite purpose and that you know what orders you ought to give yourselves, or rather what are God's orders for your life.
What is your purpose in life? I hope—Lord Bacon's words in our Tuesday midday Prayer express it—"the glory of God and the relief of man's estate." You go into life knowing how dearly the Lord Jesus Christ loves you, at how dear a cost He bought you; therefore, not just to save your souls, not just because you would be afraid to live carelessly, but, because of His amazing love, you will try to live as He asks you to do. God grant you such a sense of that amazing love that you may rejoice to spend and be spent in His service.
And you will want to live for the relief of man's estate. The more your eyes open to life, the more you see how many sore hearts there are in the world, and (besides the well-dressed sorrows which are as sore as any) there is the pain and poverty and sin of those who have no chance in the world; what can you do for the poor—you who have so many chances in life, who have so much love, so many pleasures? There may not be very much open to you when you first grow up, and you may be very busy with your pleasures and home duties. Let your mother enjoy your pleasures, she has been planning them for years, but do what little things you can to discipline yourself so that by-and-by (when you are free to work) you may be a worker worth having. It is that which makes the waiting years worth while.