The present moment, then, is the time to take into account the right use of all your knowledge and all your accomplishments. What is the precise amount of these, we will not presume to ask; but let it not be forgotten, that your accountability extends to the time, the trouble, and the expense bestowed on your education, as well as to what you may have actually acquired. How many years have you been at school?—We will suppose from two to ten, and that from one hundred pounds, to five or more, have been expended upon you during this time; add to this the number of teachers employed in your instruction, the number of books appropriated to your use, the time—to say nothing of the patience—bestowed upon you, the anxiety of parents, who probably spared with difficulty the sum that was necessary for your education, their solicitude, their self-denial, their prayers that this sum might be well applied; reflect upon all these, and you will perceive that a debt has been contracted, which you have to discharge to your parents, your family, and to society—that you have enjoyed a vast amount of advantages, for which you have to account to the great Author of your being.
Such, then, is your position in life; a Christian woman, and therefore one whose first duty is to ascertain her proper place—a sensitive and intelligent being, more quick to feel than to understand, and therefore more under the necessity of learning to feel rightly—a responsible being, with numberless talents to be accounted for, and believing that no talent was ever given in vain, but that all, however apparently trifling in themselves, are capable of being so used as to promote the great end of our being, the happiness of our fellow-creatures, and the glory of our Creator.
Let not my young friends, however, suppose that I am about to lay down for them some system of Spartan discipline, some iron rule, by which to effect the subjugation of
