My Dear Daughter:—­To give and receive pleasure in those pleasant assemblages and meetings of acquaintances and friends known by the general name of society, is one of the worthy minor aims of life.  It is one of the marks of an advancing state of intelligence and culture, when an assemblage of gentlemen and ladies can pass delightful hours in the mere interchange of thought in conversation.  And while games and other amusements may serve for a temporary variety (always excepting games known as “kissing-games,” which should be promptly tabooed and denounced, and ever will be in truly refined society), yet animated and intelligent conversation must always hold the first place in the list of the pleasures of any refined society circle.

How shall a young girl fit herself to enjoy and to afford enjoyment in general society?  Certainly the first requisites are intelligence, a good knowledge of standard literature, a general knowledge of the more important events that are taking place in the world, and such a knowledge of the best current literature as may be obtained from the regular reading of one or two of the standard monthly magazines.

And here it may help you if I particularize a little in regard to a knowledge of important events of the day and also of general and current literature.  Of course the main source of knowledge of the more important events that are going on in the world is the daily or weekly newspaper; and yet there is scarcely any reading so utterly demoralizing to good mental habits as the ordinary daily paper.  More than three-fourths of the matter printed in the “great city dailies” is not only of no use to anyone, but it is a positive damage to habits of mental application to read it.  It is a waste of time even to undertake to sift the important from the unimportant.  The most that any earnest person should attempt to do with a daily paper is to glance over the headlines which give the gist of the news, and then to read such editorial comments as enable the reader to understand the more important events and affairs that are transpiring in the world so that reference to them in conversation would be intelligent and intelligible.  But if one should never see a daily paper, yet should every week carefully read a digest of news prepared for a good weekly paper, one would be thoroughly furnished with all necessary knowledge of contemporaneous events, and the time thus saved from daily papers could be profitably employed in other reading.

The field of literature is now so vast that no one can hope to be well acquainted with more than a small portion of it.  Yet every well-informed young person should know the general character of the principal writers since the time of Shakespere, even though one should never read their works.  You may remember how, in the recently finished novel of “The Rise of Silas Lapham,” the novelist, with a few sentences, shows how ridiculous a really beautiful and amiable girl with a high-school education may make herself in conversation by her lack of knowledge of standard literature.  She was telling a young gentleman where the book-shelves were to be in the splendid new house being built by her father, and suggesting that the shelves would look nice if the books had nice bindings.