Page:Women worth emulating (1877) Internet Archive.djvu/73

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CHAPTER IV.

Miss Elizabeth Smith.

SELF-CULTURE.

The excellent systems of teaching in the present day so smooth the steep hill of difficulty to the young seeker after knowledge, that it is sometimes thought there is no great need of saying much now about self-training and culture. Every facility is afforded to learner, and the assumption is that all learn readily, and that allusions to and examples of what was in former times very justly called "the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties" are now no longer needed.

While rejoicing heartily that the difficulties in the way of school instruction are removed, that elementary knowledge is insisted on for all, and that culture in the higher branches of attainment