How to be a Lady Part 1

         "In one since, very young persons are apt to think to much of themselves- in another, not enough. When they think they know more than their parents and teachers, or other elderly people, and so set themselves up to be bold and smart, then they think to much of themselves. It used to be said, when I was a boy, "Young folks think old folks are fools; but old folks know young folks are fools." Although I would be very far indeed from calling you fools, because you have already acquired much knowledge, and have the capacity of acquiring much more, yet, with reference to such knowledge as is acquired by experience, and in comparison with what there is to be known, there is "more truth than poetry," in old adage. But when young people suppose it is of no consequence what they do, or how they behave,  because they are young, then they do not think enough of themselves. Should you see a man riding with a little stick for a whip, you would not think his stick worth your notice at all; but the biggest tree I ever saw grew from a little willow stick that a man road home with, and then planted in his garden. You have sat under the beautiful shade of a great elm-tree; and when you have looked upon it's tall, majestic trunk, and it's great and strong branches,  with their ten thousand little limbs waving gracefully before the wind, you have been filled with admiration and delight. "What a mighty tree," you say; "I wonder how long it has been growing." But the seed of that tree, when planted, many years ago, was no bigger than a mustard seed; and if you had seen the little tiny sprout your grandfather was tying up with so much care, when it was only a few years old, you would have wondered how a man could think so much of such an insignificant twig. But if he had let it grow up as it had began, without any care, it would not have been the stately tree it is now. That was the most important period of its life, when it was a little twig. It began to lean over, and grow crooked and ugly. If it had not been trained up then, it would have continued to grow worse and worse; and, after it had grown to be a tree, it could not have been straitened at all. Now you are, in some respects, like this twig. You, too, have just begun to be; and now your character is pliable like the young tree. But, unlike the it, your being is to have no end.  Instead of growing a few hundred years, like a great tree, you are to live forever.  And everything you do now must have an influence in forming your character for your whole being. In this latter sense, you cannot think too much of yourself; for you are the germ of an immortal being.

How to be a Lady: By Harvey Newcomb 1850