It is evident that increasing freedom must be allowed as the years go on, and that girls have a right to their own taste and manner--and within the limits of their knowledge to form their own opinions; but it is in this period of their development that they are most sensitive to the mental influence of those who are training them, and their quick responsiveness to the best is a constant stimulus to go on for their sakes, discovering and tasting and training one's discernment in what is most excellent.
From this point we may pass to what is first in the order of things--but first and last in this department of an English education--and that is reading, with the great field of literature before us, and the duty of making the precious inheritance all that it ought to be to this young generation of ours--heiresses to all its best.
English literature will be to children as they grow up, what we have made it to them in the beginning.

There will always be the exceptional few, privileged ones, who seem to have received the key to it as a personal gift.

They will find their way without us, but if we have the honour of rendering them service we may do a great deal even for them in showing where the best things lie, and the way to make them one's own.
But the greater number have to be taken through the first steps with much thought and discernment, for taste in literature is not always easy to develop, and may be spoiled by bad management at the beginning.

We are not very teachable as a nation in this matter--our young taste is wayward, and sometimes contradictory, it will not give account of itself, very likely it cannot.

We have inarticulate convictions that this is right, and suits us, and something else is wrong as far as our taste is concerned, and that we have rights to like what we like and condemn what we do not like, and we have gone a considerable way along the road before we can stop and look about us and see the reason of our choice.