pair got along. She was the mother of a fine boy, whom I knew she would be glad to have me see. I called, was treated cordially, and saw the identical old portfolio, on the identical old piano. I asked the favor of a tune. The husband with a sigh informed me that Georgiana had dropped her music. I looked about the walls, and saw the crayon Samuel, and the awful shipwreck in India ink. Alas! the echoes of the Battle of Prague that came back over the field of memory, and these fading mementoes around me, were all that remained of the accomplishments of the late Miss Georgiana Aurelia Atkins Green.

Now, young woman, I think you will not need any assurance from me that I have drawn a genuine portrait, for which any number of your acquaintances may have played the original. What do you think of accomplishments like these? How much do they

amount to? My opinion of them is that they are the shabbiest of all things that can be associated with a woman's life and history. I have told you this story in order to show you the importance of incorporating your accomplishments with your very life. It is comparatively an easy task to learn a few tunes by rote; to get up, with the assistance of a teacher, a few drawings; to go through with a few French exercises; but it is not so easy to learn the science of music, and go through

the manual practice necessary to make the science available under all circumstances. It is not easy to sketch with facility from nature. It is not easy to comprehend the genius of the French language, and so to familiarize yourself with it that it shall ever remain an open language to you, and give you a key to a new literature. A true accomplishment is won only by hard work; but when it is won, it is a part of you, which nothing but your own neglect can take away from you.

And now let me tell you a secret. Multitudes of married men are led to seek the society of other women, or go out among their own fellows, and often into bad habits, because they have drunk every sweet of life which their wives can give them. They have heard all their tunes, seen all their efforts at art, sounded their minds, and measured every charm, and they see that henceforth there is nothing in the society of their wives but insipidity. They married women of accomplishments, but they see never a new development—no improvement. Their wives can do absolutely nothing. The shell is broken; the egg is eaten.

The first accomplishment that I would urge upon you, is that of using the English language with correctness, elegance, and facility. There are, comparatively, few young women who can write a good note. I know of hardly one who can punctuate her sentences

properly. I beg of you never to write affection with a single f, or friendship without an i in the first syllable. Such slips destroy the words, and the sentiments they represent. If you accomplish yourselves in nothing else, learn thoroughly how to use your mother tongue. I remember one young woman with whom, when in youth, I had the misfortune to correspond. In the barrenness of subjects upon which to engage her pen, she once inquired by note whether I ever saw such “ spell of wether," as we had been having. I frankly informed her that I never did, and that I hoped she would never indulge in such another, for it made me cool. She took the hint, and broke off the correspondence.

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There are many who can write tolerably well, but who cannot talk. Conversation I am inclined to rank among the greatest accomplishments and the greatest arts. Natural aptness has much to do with this, but no woman can talk well who has not a good stock of definite information. I may add to this, that no woman talks well and satisfactorily who reads for the simple purpose of talking. There must exist a genuine interest in the affairs which most concern all men and women. The book, magazine, and newspaper literature of the time, questions of public moment, all matters and movements relating to art, affairs of local interest -all these a woman may know something of, and

know something definitely. Of all these she can talk if she will try, because there is something in all which excites feeling of some kind, and shapes itself into opinion.

But whatever accomplishment a young woinan attempts to acquire, let her by all means acquire it thoroughly and keep it bright. Accomplishments all occupy the field of the arts. They are things which have no significance or value save in the ability of doing. They become, or should become, the exponents of a woman's highest personality. They are her most graceful forms of self-expression, and into them she can pour the stream of her thoughts and fancies, and through them utter the highest language of her nature and her cult re. Accomplishments make a woman valuable to herself. They greatly increase her pleasure, both directly in the practice, and indirectly through the pleasures which she gives to society. A truly accomplished woman-one whose thoughts have come naturally to flow out in artistic forms, whether through the instrumentality of her tongue, her pen, her pencil, or her piano, is a treasure to herself and to society. Such a woman as this would I have you to be. There may be something to interfere with your being all this; but this you can do: you can acquire thoroughly every accomplishment for which

you have a natural aptitude, or you can let it alone. Do not be content with a smattering of anything. Do not be content to play parrot to your teachers, until your lesson is learned, and then think you are accomplished. Do not be content with mediocrity in any accomplishment you undertake. Do not by content to be a Miss Georgiana Aurelia Atkins Green.