You have now come to that period of life at which you must determine
your final future course; hence you have need of a serious mind and
will to guide you securely in the choice of the road, as also to pave
it with those virtues which in the end will form your most precious
treasures. This road will be such as you have made it, narrow or
wide, level or rough, according to the pains and labor that you have
expended in preparing it.
If you hearken to the voice of reason, and wish to profit by the
lessons of wisdom, you will not squander a most precious time in vain
amusements; you will neither step to the right nor to the left, but
continue right on in the way of stern duty. The world's siren charms
will have no attraction for you, as their bitter fruits would extort
from you bitter regrets for having so little profited by the most
precious time of your life.
Oh, how sorrowful the old age of women who have never nourished
their minds otherwise than with frivolous thoughts: finding neither
in themselves nor in society any means to dispel the gloom that
envelops them, and not being able to enlist the sympathy of the world
which abandons and despises them, they are condemned to eke out a
miserable existence in the disgust and wearisomeness of a sombre
solitude.
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