BUSKIN’S ADVICE TO YOUNG LADIES.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2903, 15 July 1882, Page 3

BUSKIN’S ADVICE TO YOUNG LADIES.

in order to investigate ono-sclf, it is well to find out what one is to know. Don’t think vaguely about it. Take pen and paper and write down as accurate a description of yourself as is possible, and if you dare not, find out why you dare not, and try and get strength of heart enough to look yourself in the face, mind as well as body. Always have two mirrors on your dressing table, and with proper care, dress mind and body at the same time. Put your best intelligcnce-to finding out what you are good for and what you can be made into. The mere resolve not to be useless and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and most delicate way, improve oneself. All accomplishments should be considered as means of assisting others. In music get the voice disciplined and clear, and think only of accuracy ; expression and effect will take care of themselves. So in drawing ; learn to set down the right shape of anything, and thereby explain its character to another person; but, if you try to make only showy drawing for praise, or only pretty ones for amusendenL your drawing will have little or no real interest for you and no education power. Resolve to do each day something useful in the vulgar sense. Learn the economy of the kitchen, the good and bad qualities of every common article of food, and the simplest and best modes of their preparation ; help poor families in their cooking, show them how to make as much of everything as possible, and how to make little niceities ; coaxing and tempting them into tidy and pretty ways, and pleading for well-folded table-cloths, however coarse, and for a flower or two out of the garden to strew on them. One should, at the end of every day, be able to say, as proudly as any peasant, that she had not eaten the bread of idleness. Get quit of the absurd idea that Heaven will interfere to correct great errors, while allowing its laws to take their own course in pushing small ones. If food is carelessly prepared no one expects Providence to make it palatable ; neither, if through years of folly you misguide your own life, need you expect Divine intolerance to bring around everything at last for tho best. I tell you, positively, the word is not so costituted. The consequences of great mistakes are Just as sure as those of small ones, and the happiness of your whole life, and of all the lives over which you have power, depends as literally on your common sense and discretion as the excellence and order of a day.”