purses, or the purses of their friends; it calls forth more complaining than almost any thing else they have to do; the letters they receive are seldom fraught with much interest; and yet they plunge into this reciprocity of annoyance, as if the chief business of life was to be writing or receiving letters.
Still I am far from supposing that this means of interchanging sentiment and thought, might not be rendered highly beneficial to the youthful mind; because I believe writing is of great importance as a branch of education. Without this habit, few persons, and especially women, think definitely. The accustomed occupation of their minds is that of musing; and they are, consequently, seldom able to disentangle a single clear idea from the current of vague thoughts, which they suffer perpetually to flow, and which affords them a constant, but, at the same time, a profitless amusement, in the variety of ideas it presents, alike without form, and void. But, in order to write with any degree of perspicuity, we are, to a certain extent, compelled to think; and, consequently, the habit of writing letters, if the subject-matter be well chosen, might be rendered highly advantageous to young women, who, on the termination of their scholastic exercises, require, more than at any other time of life, some frequently recurring mental occupation, to render their education complete.
The art of writing a really good letter ranks unquestionably amongst the most valuable accomplishments of woman, and next to that of conversing well. In both cases, the first thing to be avoided, is common-place; because, whatever partakes of the nature of common place, is not only vulgar, but ineffective. I know not how I can better define this term, so frequently used, and so little understood, than by saying that common-place consists chiefly in speaking of things by their little qualities, rather than their great ones.
