Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls | Page 3

to observe the outward forms of society. These are easily learned and practiced; but the finest, best, most genuine good manners can never be acquired except as they become the natural expression of gentleness, kindness intelligence, respect for parents and elders, and an earnest desire to do good to our fellow beings. Strive, my dear child, to cherish these graces in your heart, and good behavior and good manners will naturally follow.

LETTER II.
SELF-CONTROL AND SELF-CULTURE.
My Dear Daughter:--One great and difficult lesson is given to each of us to learn in this life, which must be learned if we ever hope to live happy or useful lives. It is the lesson of self-control. Parents and teachers and circumstances may help or hinder in the learning of this lesson; but it depends mainly upon yourself, upon your own individual will, whether you shall learn it or not. It is the first lesson which wise parents and teachers strive to teach a child. It is the fundamental, the all-important lesson of life. It extends to every department of our nature and affects every act and-event of our lives. Take notice with me how the possession or non-possession of the power of self-control affects the lives of young people in a few particulars.
Certain self-evident duties are imposed upon every rational being. One of the first of these is the duty of being usefully employed a large portion of our time. It is probable that nearly all young people have a certain dislike for work, and self-control must come in to help them do the work that belongs to them to do. It may help you in acquiring this self-control to reflect often what a really great thing it is to be able to compel yourself to do from a sense of duty what you are naturally disinclined to do? also what an unworthy and, indeed, contemptible thing it is not to be able to make yourself do what you know you ought to do. You are perhaps disinclined, for instance, to rise when you should in the morning. You feel disposed to indulge your ease and comfort, and to lie in bed when you know you should be awake and preparing for the day. Here is one of the very instances in which if you will learn to control and compel yourself you will soon reap substantial reward. The more you indulge yourself, the harder does the task of rising and getting ready for the day become. But say to yourself, "I will waken right away," rise and walk around a little, and you will be surprised to find how soon the habit of prompt rising will become easy. You have your morning duties to perform, or your lessons to learn. If you say to yourself, when it is time you should begin, "I will not loiter, but immediately set about my work or study," you will find in the very act and determination a help and strength, and pleasure even, which you can never imagine before you have experienced it. God has so made us that in the very performance of duty, however trivial, there is a reward and strength and a very high kind of pleasure. But we need firm self-control to compel ourselves thus to do our duty. I shall rejoice if any words of mine lead you to test for yourself the truth of what I have said.
Self-control should extend to our speech, temper, and pleasures. To be able to control the tongue is rightly esteemed one of the greatest of moral achievements. You remember what the apostle James says, that "if any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle [control] the whole body." It is so easy to say cross or unkind words; so easy to make slighting or gossiping remarks about companions or friends; so hard to efface the painful effects of such hasty or ill-considered speech. It is so easy to make a petulant or disrespectful reply to parents or teachers when they reprove; so much harder, yet so much better, to acknowledge a fault and feel and express sorrow for wrong-doing. Your own conscience and consciousness tell you how much happier you feel when you have done the latter. Yet you need, over and over again, to fortify yourself against temptation to hasty or ill-natured or improper speech by determining beforehand that you will not give way to the temptation; that you will control yourself. And whenever you have allowed yourself to be overcome by such temptation you should make it the occasion of serious reflection and earnest resolve to be more guarded in future. You will have attained a great deal in the direction of high and noble character when you have learned to control your