Page:Side talks with girls (1895).djvu/158

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146
Side Talks with Girls

superficial because they cannot possibly learn one thing well when they are attempting so much. Then, too, about work. There is a perfect craze among young women to leave their homes and go out to work in the outside world. When this is necessary it is all right, but in many cases it is not necessary. There is work to do at home, and the foolish girl does not see the value of her home work, but with every nerve at a tangent, with her heart throbbing so rapidly she can almost hear it, she rushes out into the big world for work that should not be hers, and which will use her up mentally and physically in a very short time. When the good God was arranging the human pegs into their abiding-places, He did not put the round ones in the square holes, but when a woman rushes away from the work that is laid out for her, she finds that she is wrongly situated, and she wears herself out worrying over this. Then she is old and tired when she should be young and fresh.

Sometimes, even in her home life, the fever of haste comes to her, and I beg of her, for I know her among my girls, to learn to do things quietly. Walk up and down stairs; make the beds and dust the rooms quietly, and not as if you were being pursued by the demon of unrest, enjoy yourself easily, don't let your nerves get the better of you when you are playing a game. If you dance, don't do it furiously, and, above all things, don't fall into