Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1875-03-26
To Girls Entering the Teens.

You are no longer children, no indeed,
but getting ready to be young ladies.
By this time you are through arithme-
tic and geography, and are studying al
zebra and natural philosophy, trying
perhaps to write poetry now and then,
and thinking what kind of woman you
will be six or seven years from now.
That is very good thing to think about
and while you are thinking what you
will be and do when you are eighteen
and nineteen and twenty, let your minds
run forward and try to think what you
will be and do at thirty and thirty-fve
Why, then we shall be old married
women" you say, "and begin to think
about wearing spectacles," Very true,
doubtless, in many cases, if you all live !;
but what kind of old married women :"
do you intend to be? Girls that are
pretty atsixteen and twenty-pretty and
nothing more-by the time they are
thirty and thirty-fve are usually not
pretty at all, but faded, disappointed
and unhappy. There's nothing that
wears through the years and doesn't
wear out, but grows brighter and better
the longer it lasts, like sweetness of tenn
per and intellectual culture. 1t will be
great thing for you girls, by and by,
that you are perfect now in Algebra, in
History, in Philosophy and of course in
reading and spelling and arithmetic
perfect in all your studies. AT thirty
four" writes a mother, "I find myself
unable to help my children in their stud.
les and suffer painfully at times from
early disadvantages" Her May time
was clouded with rain and chilled by
frost, and you all know how hard it is
to plant seed in July and try to get o
good return from Tin fact most people
find that it can't be done. This is your
May time, it will some time be July and
August and November with you. What
kind of women will you be then? Old
wrinkled, ugly, tedious, uninteresting
Mrs. 'Somerville was beautiful to extreme
old age, because she was SO intelligent
because her May and June were so dill
gently employed in planting in her mine
the seeds of all knowledge. Mrs. Bar
bauld, Miss Milford, Mrs. Joanna Bail
lie, Mrs. Montague, were as interestin,
in their age as in their youth. Thougl
they grew in years, they grew in knowl
edge and favor, because the seed time 0
their lives was sedulously improved
: That's big word. but look it out in tn
dictionary; hunt up all the words yol
don't know the meaning of; hunt up al
the places in the geography whose loca
tion you are uncertain Of and if yol
, have biographical dictionary, read VI
all the characters spoken of in you
school and reading books.
Of course you will play, and sew
and help your mothers about the house
work, learning how to do everything
D but when you go to school, don't vast
your time; when you study, don't daw
die over your book, but study in earnes
and with a purpose to learn.
In few years from now, when yo
S are grown, there will be intelligent me
: looking for intelligent wives. You a
o know that women who are both amiabl
q and cultivated, even if their faces ar
: plain, needn't be old maids unless the
J. choose to be. One word is enough her,
/ You know, too, that bright, gifted, inte
e lectual men and women rarely descend
e ed from stupid, ignorant, unaspiring p.
n rents.-Mrs. T. B. Lyman IN Tribune.