Just as truly should she know that, if she is
careless of endeavor or negligent of her days, she will meet with
disparagement and punishment.
It is most necessary for a girl to have a motive placed before her,
that she may bring out whatever undeveloped faculties may be latent
within her. This motive may be a comparatively slight one,--no more
than the training of a window-garden, the collecting of newspaper slips,
or the making of bread; but, if she does her particular work better
than others, she will attain a certain degree of superiority, and her
time has, for her, been as profitably filled as that which another
person devotes to a larger work. By motive, let me repeat, I mean
something given a girl to do which shall be especially her work: not
always an ambitious one,--a desire to shine in society, letters, or the
arts,--but something just for herself, with its own rewards.
How much more numerous the motives which can be given an American girl
than one who lives on foreign soil! Look at the German girl, for
example. Her country arbitrarily divides its people into high and low.
The peasant maiden has so long stayed one side of the barrier, she
thinks she always must; so, with her scanty loaf of black bread near
her on the ground, she leans against a tree, knits her stocking, and
tends the flock. When night comes she goes home to her rude stone
cottage, lifts a prayer to the Virgin, if she is an Austrian, and one
for the king.
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