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

by all young people. There are, also,
constant opportunities for observation of the conduct and manners of
polite people, by which young people may and should profit and learn
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