Hold Up Your Heads, Girls!

ish in thin air! If ever they come tapping on your window-pane again, don't open the casement; but turn your backs, stop up your ears, laugh as loud as you can, then seize the first piece of work

all over their opponents. This coat of mail is absolutely impenetr

to flight. Sing your song, laugh your laugh, and make work, if none is at hand.

use for entertaining such company? If we are ashamed of them, let's send them packing,

t fight very hard to resist its allurements. It may be convenient enough to censure inheritance for this or that oddity. Our grandmothers had strange moods,-spoke to people on some days and did n

f inheritance, girls, for there is much in it not well for us to consider at present. We are simply to remember to preserve and increase the good left us, and fight to the utmost all evil that may have come from ancestry. Every girl has peculiar forms of te

ce, our idleness, our vanity, which make us

perceive them. They sit beside us by hundreds when we fancy we are alone; and change their colors and their wheedling tones to suit our inclinations, while they pour into our ears deceitful whisperings that the world is all w

ver came by their name? It must have arisen from the weirdness of the tempest, from the changing hues of the s

re affection, your generous impulses, with all the future before you in which to keep on trying, I cannot understand why you should hug such a phantom as a mood. Just think again how dangerous gloomy moods are,-how bold! Why, with the least hint at an invitation, they will come in, not for a call, nor for one meal, but to stay and

hope with all the combined powers of your fancy. If the clouds of misfortune pile up, and it pours bad luck,-mother scolds because you did not sweep your room carefully; father threatens because of an approach to familiarity with the new young man over the way; brother frets because his stockings are not well darned; lessons all went wrong in the morning; your best f

ly treated, even by the most uncivil angels; and, when he came to discourse with them, instead of contradicting or forcing him, they took his part, and adopted his manners, and even good angels came from far to see him, and take up their abode with him. The angel that was sent to find a place of torment for him attempted to remove him to a worse pit, but with no better success; for such was the contented spirit of the monk, t

ing ensues from wrongs others have done, when sickness or any kind of calamity besets you, and when you are hunted to the verge of gloom

will see the crooked, and the men who look for the straight will see the straight." [Footnote: Ruskin.] Try especially to see what is good in your own lot. If you have not fine carpets, luxurious chairs,

t and Present" his chapters on work, particularly that on "Labor and Reward"? Mr. Carlyle has written much that is unintelligible to most readers. He has a very grotesque, volcanic style not good to imitate. He is often sad and hopeless about the h

d into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work! Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair itself, all these like hell-dogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor day-worker, as of every man; but he bends himself with free valor against his task, and all these ar

n their variety they are soft and shimmering on the tree branches, a slightly ruddy gray on the branchlets, and a serener gray on the tree trunks. Overhead, even when a storm is gathering in the sky, there are the colors of the moonstone tintin

one with Nature we have great peace; when fretted and unmindful of her presence, we are irritated, and out of our true el

y girl on a bright June morning, when all Nature is radiant with be

selves too severely, nor foster distrust; for

ngerous as possible; be always

ed coves along the river-border, or when you drift among the islands purple with sunset light? What makes you want to shut your eyes, and to throw away the mask of seeming, when some one sings the song you love? and what makes you feel a kind of dead, low, dreadful pause, when the reader's voice ceases, and the story conies to an end? Are you

y, you will nail the door back on the unsightly thing, clothe it in some decent garments, and make it as respectable as possible in its niche, since it must stay with you. Events, decrees, circumstances, will not change for just you and me; but we can change ourselves,

enjoy moods? Do we have any respect for ourselves while in them? Aren't we al

you would shun your very self, and want to get out of your body somehow. You watch a girl who has an attack of the megrims. She seems to hang from her shoulders, or thereabouts; her nimbleness is gone; her muscles seem flabby; she reels more than she walks; she picks up a book to let it fall down; she will not look

e ugliness which attacks it. The form appears to gather passion more and more with each hour, till, at last, full of violence, the human frame sways, heaves, and the girl breaks her mood into a flood of scalding tears.

, for a day, for two days A stone sepulchre is all about her, and she only reaches out of it when she wants bread and water. She, herself, does not seem to be in her body: she is a ghost. When we pass by her tomb-like body, perhaps a head will nod to us, or lips will mutter monosyllables. If our dress touches he

of dejection, the lack of resistance to a mood, only increase hardship. How is the doctor to help your body, if you do not help your spirits? How are your surroundings to be improved, if you do not go to work? How are you to get work, if you do not seek it, and try with all your might to find it? How is trouble to be lessened or