My dear daughter,
This is your eleventh birthday, and as I have heretofore addressed a few words to you on these interesting occasions, I will not depart from my former custom now.
And my daughter, what shall I say to you? Shall I say something to please or to instruct you—to flatter or benefit you? I know you dislike being pleased unless the pleasure make you better, and you dislike all flattery. And you know too, that your father never gave you a word of flattery in his life. So there remains for you the true and purest pleasure of being instructed and benefited by words of love and the deepest regard for your improvement in all that shall make you more happy in yourself and beautiful to others. And so I shall speak plainly to you of yourself, and of my desire for your improvement in several important things.
First—Your Manners. Try to be more gentle. You like gentle people and every one is more agreeable as he cultivates this habit. None can be agreeable who are destitute of it and how shall you become more gentle? Only by governing your passions, and cherishing your love to everyone who is near you. Love is gentle: Hate is violent. Love is well-mannered; Selfishness is rude, vulgar. Love gives sweet tone to the voice, and makes the countenance lovely. Love then, and grow fair and agreeable.
Second: Be Patient. This is one of the most difficult things to everyone, old or young. But it is also one of the greatest things. And this comes of Love too. Love is Patient: it bears; it suffers long; it is kind; it is beautiful; it makes us like angels. Patience is, indeed, angelic; it is the Gate that opens into the House of Happiness. Open it, my daughter, and enter in and take all your sisters in with you.
Third: Be Resolute. Shake off all Sluggishness, and follow your Confidence as fast as your feelings, your thoughts, your eye, your hand, your foot, will carry you. Hate all excuses: almost always, these are lies. Be quick in your obedience: delay is a laggard, who never gets up with himself, and loses the company of confidence always. Resolution is the ladder to Happiness. Resolve and be a wise and happy girl.
Fourth: Be Diligent. Put your heart into all you do: and fix your thoughts on your doings. Halfness is almost as bad as nothing: be whole then in all you do and say.
But I am saying a great deal and will stop now with the hope of meeting you on the 16th March, 1843 (the good God sparing us till then) a gentler, a meeker, more determined and obligent girl.
Your friend
and
Father
Concordia
16 March
1842
For
Anna Bronson Alcott.