Again, twenty years hence, the little girl who now sits at her desk, crowned with golden ringlets, will be a wife and mother, and the mistress of a well-conditioned home.  She is a composite of Mary and Martha and in her kingdom reigns supreme and benign.  In her home there is no hint of “raw haste, half-sister to delay,” for long since she acquired the habit of serene mastery.  She meets her manifold responsibilities with a smile and sings her way through them all.  If clouds arise, she banishes them with the magic of her poise and amiability.  She can say with Napoleon, “I do not permit myself to become a victim of circumstances; I make circumstances.”  Back in the school she learned order, system, method, and acquired the sense of responsibility.  At first the teacher’s desk was her special care, and by easy gradations the scope of her activities was widened until she came to feel responsible for the appearance of the entire schoolroom.  Now in her womanhood she is a delight to her husband, her children, her guests, and her neighbors.  Emergencies neither daunt her nor render her timorous, but, serene and masterful, she meets the new situation as a welcome novelty, and, with supreme amiability, accepts it as a friendly challenge to her resourcefulness.  She needs not to apologize or explain, for difficulties disappear at her approach because, in the school, responsibility was one of the major goals of her training.

Or, again, two decades hence this child may have attained to a position in the world of affairs where good taste, judgment, perseverance, self-control, graciousness, and tact are accounted assets of value.  But these qualities, gained through experience, are as much a part of herself as her hands.  A thousand times in the past has the responsibility been laid upon her of making selections touching shapes, colors, materials, or types, till now her judgment is regarded as final.  Her self-control has become proverbial, but it is not the miracle that it seems, for it has become grooved into a habit by much experience.  She met all these lions in her path at school and vanquished them all, with the aid of the teacher’s counsel and encouragement.  She can perform heroisms now because she long since contracted the habit of heroisms.  And responsibility is most becoming to her now because in the years past she learned how to wear it.  She has multiplied her powers and usefulness a hundred-fold by reason of having learned to assume responsibility.

She has learned to lift her eyes and scan the far horizon and not be afraid.  With gentle, kindly eyes she can look into the faces of men and women in all lands and not be abashed in their presence.  She can soothe the child to rest and prove herself a scourge to evil-doers, all within the hour.  She knows herself equal to the best, but not above the least.  She does not need to pose, for she knows her own power without ever vaunting it.  Her simplicity and sincerity are the fragrant bloom