"THE ideal woman .. is full of sympathy, full of observation, with quick understanding of others' needs, thoughts, and feelings; absolutely sincere, of constant and even temper, and of a cheerfulness that never faileth; without caprice, without vanity, without selfishness of any kind; generous, open-handed, charitable to a fault."

HER books are written in men's souls.

Coleridge.

February 6.

MADAME DE Sévigné, 1626.

...

I BELIEVE that most women would be wiser, better, and therefore happier, for larger intellectual training. . . For most women, it should be such as cultivates tastes which bring intelligent joys into the midst of any life.

S. Weir Mitchell.

YOUTHFUL effort, ambition, aspiration, hope, college character, and friendship have no artist to paint them as yet. But whatever of poetry belongs to them is present in full measure here.

Goldwin Smith.

Which comforts while it mocks,

Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:

What I aspired to be,

And was not, comforts me;

A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.

Robert Browning.

He strikes a hundred lyres, a thousand strings,
Yet one at heart are all the songs he sings.

February 8.

JOHN RUSKIN, 1819.

William Watson.

But it is to you, ye workers, who do already work, . that the whole world calls for new work and nobleness; to make some nook of God's creation a little fruitfuller, better, more worthy of God; to make some human hearts a little wiser, manfuller, happier,

...

more blessed. Carlyle.

INTELLECT is the power by which such [spiritual]

things are discerned, and imagination is that by which

they are expressed.

Coventry Patmore.