"Every true life," says J. R. Miller, "should be a perpetual climbing upward. We should put our faults under our feet, and make them steps on which to lift ourselves daily a little higher.... We never Youth, all possibilities are in its hands.—Longfellow. in this world get to a point where we may regard ourselves as having reached life’s goal, as having attained the loftiest height within our reach; Thought is deeper than all speech.— Cranch. there are always other rounds of the ladder to climb."
So we know that the purpose of life is not to make a failure of it. And we know that we cannot make it a success unless we work toward that end. "The first People influence us who have no business to do it, simply because we have neglected to train ourselves to attend to our own affairs.—A. E. Winship. great rule is, we must do something—that life must have a purpose and an aim—that work should be not merely occasional and spasmodic, but steady and continuous," says Lecky. "Pleasure is a jewel which will retain its luster only when it is in a setting of work, and a vacant life is one of the worst of pains, though the islands of leisure that stud a crowded, well-occupied life may be among the things to which we look back with the greatest delight."
There can be no interest where there is no purpose. How tiresome it would As the heart, so is the life. The within is ceaselessly becoming the without.—James Allen. very soon become if we were compelled to make idle, useless marks upon paper, without any design whatsoever. But to be able to draw pictures is a delight that no one can forego. "The most pitiable life is the aimless life," says Jenkin Lloyd Jones. "Heaven help the man or woman, the boy or girl, who is not interested in anything outside of his or her own immediate comfort and that related thereto, who eats bread to make strength I have faith in the people.—Abraham Lincoln. for no special cause, who pursues science, reads poetry, studies books, for no earthly or heavenly purpose than mere enjoyment or acquisition; who goes on accumulating wealth, piling up money, with no definite or absorbing purpose to apply it to anything in particular."
Perhaps we expect to-day, more than men have at any other time in the Of all the propensities which teach mankind to torment themselves, that of causeless fear is the most irritating, busy, painful and pitiable.—Walter Scott. world’s history, that girls as well as boys, must look forward to doing something definite in life. It is not deemed sufficient for anyone simply "to be." The whole world is now living the verb "to do." The grace, strength, beauty and worth of womanhood is being enhanced with the constantly enlarging sphere of women’s work. The primitive, almost heathen, notion that the feminine sex constituted a handicap in the achieving of great success in a great majority of the fields of human endeavor is He who cannot smile ought not to keep a shop.—Chinese Proverb. rapidly fading away. It can no longer stand in the light of the brilliant achievements women are making everywhere. Indeed, men are becoming well convinced that their presumed supremacy in many of the world’s spheres of Common sense bows to the inevitable and makes use of it.—Wendell Phillips. work is being successfully challenged at every point. So general is this experience becoming that the present status of things might well be set forth somewhat after the following style:
MAN, POOR MAN!
The question used to be, ’t is true,
"What tasks are there for girls to do?"
But now we’ve reached an epoch when
We ask: "What is there left for men?"
They’ll keep enlarging "woman’s sphere"
Till man, poor, shrinking man, we fear,
Must If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.—Addison. grow quite useless, after while,
And go completely out of style.
This piece of frivolity can well be pardoned on account of its absurdity. The great work of the world is so broad, so deep, so high, that it calls for the best endeavors of all girls and boys, women and men. That the door of opportunity is henceforth to be open to all is an assurance that the work is to be more grandly Self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures.—Bovee. and beautifully done than ever before. What women may do in the years to come is wonderfully set forth by what women have done in the past. All history is filled with the splendid achievements of the women of the world. A girl of to-day will find It is generally the idle who complain they cannot find time to do that which they fancy they wish.—Lubbock.no reading more helpful and inspiring than the lives of such noble women as Martha Washington, Queen Victoria, Sally Bush—Abraham Lincoln’s good step-mother—Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Miss Louisa Alcott, Laura Bridgman, Charlotte Cushman, Maria Mitchell, Lady Franklin, What ardently we wish we soon believe.—Young. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, and Florence Nightingale.
If the girls of to-day are to have larger rewards in the world’s work, they must fit themselves for the larger responsibilities. Every prudent girl will, of course, talk over the prospect of her future years with her parents, her brothers and sisters, her teachers, or with mature and responsible friends. So very, very much depends on laying the right foundations. But there are many qualities that must constitute parts of every enduring foundation.
Attention, application, accuracy, method, punctuality, good behavior, Nature never stands still, nor souls neither; they ever go up or go down.—Julia C. R. Dorr. modesty, gentility, enlightenment, all of these and more are essential to success and for the highest achievement of the true purpose of living.