Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls | Page 4

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 speech. It is the same in regard to controlling
your temper. But there is one truth of which I can assure you: If you
will learn to be silent and not speak at all when you feel that your
temper is getting or has gotten the better of you, you will soon get the
better of your temper. There is no such efficient discipline for a hasty
temper as determined, self-imposed silence. Then, too, there is a
dignity about silence under provocation that is impressive and effective.
The greatest disadvantage at which any person can be placed in the
eyes of companions and friends is that of losing control of one's tongue
as well as of one's temper. In nearly every case where we receive
provocation or affront, speech may be silver, but "silence is golden."
The person who keeps control of his temper controls everyone.
Self-control, once acquired, will be the most important factor in helping
to shape your life rightly in every direction It will keep you from
hurtful indulgence in mere pleasure; from harmful indulgence in rich or
improper foods; from too much dissipation of time and thought in
social enjoyment It will help you to leave the society of companions
and other pleasures in order to put your mind upon your studies or your
tasks; help you, when you find lessons hard and long, and that earnest
work is required to learn them, to perform that long and earnest work;

help you, when you feel disposed to give way to indisposition or
indolence, to hold steadily on till your tasks, no matter what they are,
are accomplished.
And as good behavior is the root of good manners, so self-control is the
root of all true self-culture. We hear a great deal now-a-days about
culture, cultured people, cultivated society, etc., and it is a good and
natural wish to possess culture and to be classed among cultured people.
Intelligence and good manners are the only passport into the charmed
circle. Self-control will enable us to become possessed of both. It will
enable us to restrain ourselves from all rude, loud, hasty, ungentle
speech and action, help us to modulate our voices, and even cultivate
our laughter. It will also enable us, through mental application and
effort, to acquire knowledge. So abundant are the intellectual treasures
now brought within the reach of everyone by the cheapness of standard
educational works of every kind, that the young person who is not
intelligent through reading and study has only himself or herself to
blame. Self-control will help you to study and learn faithfully when you
are in school; it will help you to decide upon and carry out some useful
course of reading and study if you are not in school; and this, even
though you have many other duties to perform. In every town and
village may be found persons competent to advise and direct courses of
study and reading for those who have the energy to pursue them. You
will have no excuse at any period of your life for failure to progress and
improve intellectually, except your own inability to compel yourself to
make use of the opportunities that lie all around you.
It is hardly necessary for me to remind you of what you know so well,
that in reading you should choose only the best books. We may without
harm divert the mind for a little each day by light miscellaneous
reading, but young people especially need to be warned against
indiscriminate novel or story reading. Here again the virtue of
self-control comes in to help do the right and avoid the wrong. If you
discover that your taste is more for the improbable highly-wrought
pages of fiction than for such works as are known to everyone as
standard and improving, let it be a sign to you that you should summon
your self-control and compel yourself to a different sort of reading. If

you find that you cannot relish or fix your mind upon standard works of
history biography, travel, or any of the many excellent books written to
bring scientific knowledge within the comprehension of the general
reader, then you may conclude rightly that your mind is in a very
uncultivated state.
Your own efforts and determination--in other words, your power of
self-control--alone can effect anything worthy in self-culture. To attain
the power of self-control in a high degree is one of the greatest and
most important aims we can set before us in life. I do not believe it can
ever be attained in our own strength. To rightly control temper