AIR CASTLES.
"What a wonderful reader you were as a child! and certainly the books you mention were far beyond you. Yet I can not quite agree that the habit of air-castle building is pernicious. Indeed I believe in it. It needs only to be balanced by practical effort, directed towards furnishing an earthly foundation for the castle. Build, then, as high and splendid as you like, and love them so hard that you are moved to lay a few stones on the solid earth as a beginning of a more substantial structure; and some day you may wake to find some of your castles coming true. Those practical foundation stones underlying a tremendous tower of idealism have a genuine magic power. Build all you like about your baby, for instance. Think what things Mary pondered in her heart.
"No, I'm never worried about idealism except when it is contented with itself and makes but little effort at outward realization. But the fact that you are taking this course proves that you will work to realize your ideals.
"I don't think it very bad either to read to 'kill time.' Though if you go on having a family, you won't have any time to kill in a very little while. But do read on when you can, otherwise you may be shut in, first you know, to too small a world, and a mother needs to draw her own nourishment from all the world, past and present."
DUTY TO ONESELF.
"Yes, I should say you were distinctly precocious, and that you are almost certainly suffering from the effects of that early brilliancy. But the degree was not so great as to permanently injure you, especially if you see what is the matter, and guard against repeating the mistakes of your parents. I mean that you can now treat your own body and mind and nerves as you wish they had treated them. Pretend that you are your own little child, and deal with yourself tenderly and gently, making allowances for the early strain to which you were subjected. So few of us American women, with our alert minds, and our Puritanic consciences, have the good sense and self-control to refrain from driving ourselves; and if, as often happens, we have formed the bad habit early in life, reform is truly difficult, but not impossible. We can get the good of our disability by conscientiously driving home the principle that in order to 'love others as ourselves' we must learn to love ourselves as we love others. We have literally no right to be unreasonably exacting toward ourselves,—but perhaps I am taking too much upon myself by preaching outside the realm of child study."