The necessary advice is given him in these Cabinet meetings as well as privately. At these meetings the business of the departments is discussed, and also all questions of public policy of sufficient importance to make the President feel he would like advice about them. Of course the importance of the questions thus discussed may vary much, ranging between the adoption of a course of policy which may force Great Britain into war with us on the one hand, and on the other the abolition of the annual football games between Annapolis and West Point. The average Cabinet officer has a great responsibility, and can exert a most powerful influence for good or for evil throughout the entire republic.
This Department is conducted in the interest of Girls and Young Women, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on the subject so far as possible. Correspondents should address Editor.
You can tell me nothing about it, girls, nothing that I do not perfectly understand when you confide to me that you find vacation days rather slow of pace. Jenny Lucille spent last year in college, studying hard, and under high pressure from her entrance as a Freshman till the day she passed her examinations triumphantly, and was ready to begin her work as a Sophomore. It was due to her parents, who were making a great sacrifice in sending her from home, that she should do her best, and be an honor and credit to them, and being a girl of acute sensitiveness and much devotion to duty, Jenny would have been incapable of wasting her time. Then it is, after the first feeling of homesickness wears off, a gay and exciting world, this college world where so many young women are gathered, where there are sports and games and pleasant social evenings, and the feeling that something worth while is happening every day. The time flies, especially the last half of the last term, and at last, when there is a breaking-up, and the girls separate and take their different ways for home, notwithstanding their gladness that they are going to meet their dear home people, tears fill many eyes, and overflow furtively, and wet dainty handkerchiefs, and not till the train or the boat is fairly off are the faces quite bright again.
Well, home is reached, and home is sweet. How kind and hearty the father's greeting, how loving the mother's word and look, how much the children have grown, how nice it is to be in one's own room again, and to sit in one's own old seat at the dear home table! But after a little, if the household be a quiet one, and the village or town a place in which little goes on, the girl is vexed to find herself a wee bit blue. She wouldn't let anybody divine it; she shakes herself, and calls herself names in private, but she has to fight to be cheerful, and now and then she sits down and writes a long letter to her chum, and indulges in a good comfortable cry, with nobody to guess that she is not entirely contented, as indeed all sensible people would say she ought to be. The chum at Bar Harbor or Put-in-Bay, or some nook in the White or Green or Blue Mountains, some perch in the Rockies, or springs, or beach, or other gay resort, has had no time to be blue, and her letter back will be a complete contrast to Jenny's.
Now, my dear Jenny, listen to me! This fit of low spirits will pass presently, and you will be none the worse for it, if you will just credit it to the account of reaction. Take hold of whatever work there is to do in the house, the harder the better, and do it with both hands. Read an entertaining book, not a study book, but a bright story, the novel people are talking about, or else the novel of yesterday, which you have always felt you ought to read, but have not yet had time to attack in earnest. Hawthorne, Wilkie Collins, Thackeray, Dickens, choose your author and your book, and float off into the life of imagination, which cheats the life of the actual of so much of its pain.
Whatever else you do, resolutely speak brightly and look cheerful. The brave effort to be bright and cheerful on the outside braces up the inside wonderfully, soul and body, as you know, being such inseparable partners.
