Young Woman's Guide to Excellence

<h5 id="id00493">SYSTEM.</h5> <p id="id00494" style="margin-top: 2em">General neglect of system in families. Successful efforts of a few schools. Why the effects they produce a not permanent. Importance of right education. Here and there system may be found. Blessedness of having a mother who systematic. Let no person ever despair of reformation. How to begin the work.</p> <p id="id00495" style="margin-top: 2em">There is hardly any thing which the majority of our young women hate—frugality and economy, and the study of themselves, perhaps, excepted—so much as <i>system</i>. In this respect a few of our best schools have, within a few years, attempted something; and, in a few instances, with success. I could mention several schools for females, whose teachers have done much more good by the habits of order and system they have inculcated and endeavored to form, than by the sciences they have taught.</p> <p id="id00496">The tendency of this excellent feature of a few of our institutions is, however, pretty effectually counteracted by the general feeling of the public, that the school is but a place of painful though necessary restraint; and that when it is over, study is over—and with it, all the system which had been either inculcated or practised. And though not a few who have been thus compelled to live by system, for two or three years, see plainly its excellent effects, and both they and their parents acknowledge them, still the school is no sooner terminated, than every thing of the kind is very likely to become as though it had never been.</p> <p id="id00497">So long, however, as home is home, and all the associations therewith are as delightful as they now are—and so long as the greater number of our families live at random, regarding order as constraint, and method and system as slavery—just so long will the feelings of the young of each rising generation, revolt at every thing like order and system; and though for the sake of peace, as well as other and various reasons, they may be willing to conform to both, for a time, yet will they sigh, internally, for the hour when their bondage shall cease, and the day of their emancipation arrive. It is not in human nature, to look back to the scenes, and customs, and methods—if methods they deserve to be called, where all is at random—of early life, without a fondness for, and an inward desire to return to them; and there are few so hardened as not to do it whenever an opportunity occurs. How important, then—how supremely so—is right education! How important to sow, in the earliest years, the seeds of a love of order and system! How important to young women, especially, that this work should not be deferred; since if it is so, it is most likely to be deferred forever.</p> <p id="id00498">I know, full well, that here and there a house-keeper, convinced in her conscience that she can do vastly more for herself and others, as well as do it better, by means of system, than without it, attempts something like innovation upon the usual random course which prevails about her. She resolves to have her hours of labor, her hours of recreation, and her hours of reading and visiting. She believes life is long enough for all the purposes of life. She is resolved to be systematic on Sabbath and on week days; in the common details of the family; in dress; and in regard to the hours of rising, meals and rest. But she has a herculean task to accomplish—no small part of which is, to bring her husband and the other members of her family to co-operate with her. Yet, amid every discouragement, she perseveres, and at length succeeds. Is not such a victory worth securing?</p> <p id="id00499">Let the young woman who has such a person as I have just described, for her mother, rejoice in it. She can never be too grateful, not only to her mother, but to God. Her life is likely to be of thrice the usual value. Our daughters who are blessed with such mothers, may become as polished corner stones in a temple—worthy of themselves, of those who educate them, and of God.</p> <p id="id00500">But let not those who have been less fortunate, in respect to maternal training and influence, utterly despair. Convinced of the general correctness of the views here advanced, and desirous of entering on the work of reform, let them take courage, and begin it immediately. Though the mother, by her influence in the early formation of character, is almost omnipotent, she is not quite so. Though the Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots, still it is not utterly impossible for those to do well who have been long accustomed to do evil. "What has been done," you know, "<i>can</i> be done." Make this maxim your motto, and go forward in the work of self-education. But remember to begin, in the first place, with the smaller matters of life; and to conquer in one point or place of action, before you begin with another. And, lastly, remember not to rely wholly on your own strength. You are, indeed, to work—and to work with all your might; but it is always God that worketh in you, when any thing effectual is accomplished, in the way of improvement.</p> <h2 id="id00501" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XIX.</h2> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />