Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women, page 89 by George Sumner Weaver
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a Christian, a wise man or woman, is agreeable to us all. Now this is what we should love. This is what we should seek in our friends. It is not a beautiful person, or bland and polite manners, or any thing that belongs to the exterior being that we should love. It is inward worth and beauty--loveliness of spirit. Around the soul should be woven the cords of friendship and love. The outward is deceitful and perishing. The inward is true and lasting. Our affections should be taught to fix themselves on the inward. Where we see inward beauty, there we should fix the seal of our friendship. And our affections should be taught to conform to this rule. No matter how attractive the outward person, if inward attractions, such as worth, wisdom, weight of character are wanting, we should not be moved to love. The one grand rule is to let worth of mind, beauty of soul, fix our affections in the social intercourse of life. Young women can not be too particular in obeying this rule. Their moral and spiritual life, their value in the world, their well-being and happiness depend upon it. If their affections are not brought to act wisely, to cling to the good and the true of soul, they will yield them untold misery. If they love the good, the high of soul and large of heart, they will be happy, inexpressibly happy in the action of their affections.
Lecture Eight.
EMPLOYMENT.
Employment a Duty--Powers Developed by Labor--All Females are not Women--Dependence usually Ignoble--Adversity gives Strength--Girls should have Trades--Self-reliance necessary to Women--Do Something and Be Something--Riches no Excuse for Idleness--Employment gives Activity and Strength--Labor considered Vulgar--Life is given for Employment--Woman was Made for Usefulness.
I take it that men and women were made for business, for activity, for employment. Activity is the life of us all. To do and to bear is the duty of life. We know that Employment makes the man in a very great measure. A man with no Employment, nothing to do,