Be ambitious—be all you were meant to be; make the world different; be generous—freely you have received, freely give.
Some one said to me the other day, "Girls are younger nowadays, and they go on being young till they are well through middle life. At sixteen we had to look after other people, but they shirk responsibility, till women of thirty are content to be like birds of the air, just amusing themselves, and feeling no call to be of any serious use."
I said, "Well, I do not like to see even a girl of eighteen with no raison d'être, 'living like a prize animal!'"
Why were you born? God thought about you, and took trouble about you, and has something you can do for Him. To exist beautifully is not enough! Have you definite duties, which you stick to even though they bore you, e.g., house duties, or reading aloud, or lessons with the younger ones? If not, find some!
Marcus Aurelius counted each day lost in which he could not at night look back on something he had done for others.
Jeremy Taylor, in the "Golden Grove," says:—"Suppose every day to be a day of business: for your whole life is a race and a battle; a merchandise, a journey. Every day propounds to yourself a rosary or chaplet of works, to present to God at night."
I have given you three pieces of advice—
I.—Vote on the right side in conversation.
II.—Show that you love your mother.
III.—Put salt into every day.
I would end with one more. I take it from Saint Simon, that clever on-looker at the Court of Louis XIV. whose memoirs are famous. His morning greeting to himself was—
"Get up, M. le Comte! you have great things to do to-day."