THINGS AS THEY ARE.
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attempts at petty improvement.' The case of young women could scarcely have been better stated. Every day they have to do out of their own heads nearly all that they have to do. They accomplish little; for their energies are frittered away in minor attempts at petty improvement.
How true this is, the friends and counsellors of girls could abundantly testify. There is no point on which schoolmistresses are more unanimous and more emphatic than on the difficulty of knowing what to do with girls after leaving school. People who have not been brought into intimate converse with young women have little idea of the extent to which they suffer from perplexities of conscience. 'The discontent of the modern girl' is not mere
