Part 1 (2/2)
Beauty without expression tires” Of course such considerations can hardly coed at eighteen, and iht are hers already ”Oh, tell e freshht side and which is the wrong side of this Andover question about eschatology?” The young girl is impatient of open questions, and irritated at her inability to answer the zest hich she throws herself into society, athletics, into everything which co on, that our Airl, the comrade of her parents and of her brothers and their friends, brought up froious belief, of public action, of social responsibility--that this typical girl, with her quick sy hands, will not perh she have the prettiest dresses and hats in town, or theof dinners, dances, and teas
Unless there comes to her, and coe of comradeshi+p,--she must face for herself the question, ”What shall I do with irl of twenty as I overtook her one winterCommonwealth Avenue She spoke of a brilliant party at a friend's the previous evening ”But, oh!” she cried, throwing up her hands in a kind of hopeless i days are over!” I laughed at her, ”Have you sprained your ankle?” But I saw I hadmatter I have been out three years I have not done what they expected of irls co to teas and ball-games and assenthe Italians I have too much respect for the Italians
And what shall I do with the rest of irl of brains or conscience feels, with more or less bitter distinctness, unless shework for which she is well trained
Yet even if that which is the profession of woman par excellence be hers, how can she be perennially so interesting a companion to her husband and children as if she had keen personal tastes, long her own, and groith her growth? Indeed, in that respect the condition of men is almost the same as that of women It would be quite the same were it not for the fact that a enerally in itself a nity He leans his life against it He builds his hoether in a kind of natural piety and th and nobility as he ”fulfils the common round, the daily task” And that is the reason why rown old better than woer, their mental alertness and hospitality
They add fine quality to fine quality, passing froe whatever has been best in youth It was a sudden recognition of this fact whichto parties anywith are too old to dance”
Even with the help of a per men I know are those who have an avocation as well as a vocation I mean a taste or work quite apart from the business of life This revives, inspires, and cultivates them perpetually It matters little what it is, if only it is real and personal, is large enough to last, and possesses the power of growth A young sea-captain froe falls upon a copy of Shelley Appeal is made to his fine but untrained mind, and the book of the boy poet becomes the seaman's university The orld of poetry and of the other fine arts is opened, and the Shelleyian specialist beco man
A busy merchant loves flowers, and in all his free hours studies thee, and his friends continually bring hi wealth he cultivates rare and beautiful plants, and shares them with his fortunate acquaintances Happy the companion invited to a walk or a drive with such observant eyes, such vivid talk! Because of this cheerful interest in flowers, and this ingenious skill in dealing with the All his powers are alert, and his judgment is valued in public life and in private business Or is it more exact to say that because he is the kind ofsuch interests outside his daily work, he is still fresh and young and capable of growth at an age when many other men are dull and old and certain that the time of decay is at hand?
There are two reasons o interests even more persistently than men In the first place, they have more leisure They are indeed the only leisure class in the country, the only large body of persons who are not called upon to win their daily bread in direct wage-earning ways As yet, fortunately, fewus have so little self-respect as to idle about our streets and drawing-rooh to support the trae consequence Our serious, non-producing classes are chiefly woular ambition of the chivalrous American to make all the wo for themselves Machinery has taken nearly all the former occupations of women out of the home into the shop and factory Widespread wealth and comfort, and the inherited theory that it is not well for the wo as father or brothers can support her, have brought about a condition of things in which there is social danger, unless with the larger leisure are given high and enduring interests To health especially there is great danger, for nothing breaks doo ennui More people, I am sure, are broken down nervously because they are bored, than because they are overworked; and , worry over petty details, and the daily disappoint And then, besides the danger to health, there is the danger to character I need not dwell on the under influence whichprivate interest fills the vacancy The vices of luxurious city life are perhaps hardly more destructive to character than is the slow deterioration of barren country life
Though the conditions in the two cases are exactly opposite, the trouble is often the same,--absence of noble interests In the city restless idleness organizes amusement; in the country deadly dulness succeeds daily toil
But there is a second reason why a girl should acquire for herself strong and worthy interests The regular occupations of woenerally disconnected and of little educational value, at least as those homes are at present conducted Given the best will in the world, the daily doing of household details becomes a wearisome ery divine a woman must have a brain to plan and eyes to see how to ”sweep a rooe should be the hourly companions of her ould make a fine art of each detail in kitchen and nursery Too long has the pin been the appropriate sye woether things which anic connection with one another While undoubtedly er part of life in this s of home and school and society and church, it is also true, that cohesive work itself cannot be done well, even in humble circu woive ae woes are so often barren of grace and variety is just because these fine qualities have not ruled the us; dainty and finished ways of living give place to coar tastes, slatternly habits, clouds and despondency reign in the house Little children under five years of age die in needless thousands because of the dull, uniinative women on whom they depend
Such wo, instead of packing everything they do with brains, instead of studying the best possible way of doing everything se; for there is always a best hether of setting a table, of tri a child to read And this taste for perfection can be cultivated; indeed, itare to be raised There is now scientific knowledge enough, there is h, to prevent the vast anisreater difficulty is to ood taste, unselfishness prevail
What, then, are the interests which powerfully appeal tocompanions of a woman's life? I shall mention only three, all of thee life The first is the love of great literature I do not et what is called a good education and so be better qualified for the battle of life, nor do I e, books which we need for special purposes, and which are no longer of consequence when our purpose with thereat poets, books to be adopted as a resource and a solace The chief reason why so many people do not kno to make comrades of such books is because they have come to them too late We have in this country enorer number who read, and who read many hours in the week, than has ever been known elsewhere in the world But what do these millions read besides the newspapers? Possibly a denoious weekly and another journal of fashi+on or business Then coazines, and whatever else is for the moment popular in novels and poetry--the last dialect story, the fashi+onable poem, the questionable but talked-of novel Let a violent attack be made on the decency of a new story and instantly, if only it is clever, its author beco of a restless race--the women too idle, the ht literature be devourered by our populace as his drug is taken by the opium-eater, and with a similar narcotic effect We can only seek out the children, and hope by giving them from babyhood bits of the noblest literature, to prepare thee, therefore, reading as a mental stiht; and I would point out that we reat friendshi+ps that await us on the library shelves until sickness shuts the door on the outer world, or death enters the home and silences the voices that once helped to make these friendshi+ps sweet If Ho are to havefor us e need them most, it will be because they come to us as old falad and busy days before The last tiirls, he said,--for he was too ill to say e to leave with you In all your work in college never lose sight of the reason why you have co by which to earn your bread, but that every mouthful of bread may be the sweeter to your taste”
And this is the power possessed by the hty dead,--men of every time and nation, whose voices death cannot silence, who are waiting even at the poorwords may be had for the price of a day's work in the kitchen or the street, for lack of love of who e is especially equipped to introduce its students to such literature The library is at last understood to be the heart of the college The modern librarian is not the keeper of books, as was his predecessor, but the distributer of theuide to their resources, proud when he increases the use of his treasures Every language, ancient or e Its history is exay, its lish literature studied and loved There is now every opportunity for the college student to becoue and pen What other men painfully strive for he can enjoy to the full with coorating interest to which college training introduces its student I e and beautiful world in which we live ”Nature never did betray the heart that loved her,” sang her poet high priest When the world has been tooto tired eyes and e of the life within theh universal turning of the population toward the cities In 1840 only nine per cent of our people lived in cities of 8,000 inhabitants or more Now more than a third of us are found in cities But the electric-car, the telephone, the bicycle, still keep avenues to the country open Certain it is that city people feel a growing hunger for the country, particularly when grass begins to grow This is a healthy taste, and e and love of nature Fortunate are the little children in those schools whose teachers know and love the world in which they live Their young eyes are early opened to the beauty of birds and trees and plants Not only should we expect our girls to have a feeling for the fine sunset or the wide-reaching panora also about the less obvious aspects of nature, its structure, its methods of work, and the endless diversity of its parts No one can have read Matthew Arnold's letters to his wife, hisstruck by the iularly si life in flowers and trees and rivers The English lake country had given hi water and its wealth of greenery There is a close connection between the , and the passionate love of the Englishreen fields
”The world is so full of a nus,”
is the opinion of everybody who knows nature as did Robert Louis Stevenson And so our college student in to know it Let her enter the laboratories and investigate for herself Let her make her delicate experiments with the blowpipe or the balance; let her track -place to another; let her ”naun,” and make intimates of flower and fish and butterfly--and she is dull indeed if breezy tastes do not follow her through life, and forbid any of her days to be eent enjoyment ”Keep your years beautiful; e president, hi illustration of what he said
But it is a short step fro world in which we live to the love of our coly the third precious interest to be cultivated by the college student is an interest in people The scholar today is not a being ells apart in his cloister, the hts and conduct of men So the new subjects which stand beside the classics and mathematics of y Although these subjects are as yetto their investigation, and are going out to try their tentative knowledge in College Settlements and City Missions and Children's Aid Societies The best instincts of generous youth are becohters re work ofwoe sermons and public lectures in Wellesley, I always noticed a quickened attention in the audience whenever the discussion touched politics or theology These are, after all, the periven their full place in a healthy and vigorous life
But if that life includes a love of books, of nature, of people, it will naturally turn to enlarged conceptions of religion--e life In his first sere, Dr Jowett spoke of the college, ”First as a place of education, secondly as a place of society, thirdly as a place of religion” He observed that ”reat ability often fail in life because they are unable to play their part with effect They are shy, aard, self-conscious, deficient in manners, faults which are as ruinous as vices” The supre, he said, ”is usefulness in after life” Sie celebrated in Harvard's Meovernor of Massachusetts, Willia above his portrait soet the everlasting difference between ot; and it ell to re too the ancient words all Harvard o out into the world, ”They that be wise shall shi+ne as the brightness of the firhteousness as the stars for ever and ever” Good words these to go out fro at chapel to bow their heads together for athe libraries and lecture-rooin the experie e, ”Not to beheart has loyally responded, ”And to give life a ransom for many” That is the ”Wellesley spirit;” and the saone forth froe halls In any of them one may catch the echo of Whittier's noble psalm,--
”O Lord and Master of us all Whate'er our nan, We own Thy se hear Thy call, We test our lives by Thine”
That is the supreme test of life,--its consecrated serviceableness The Master of Balliol was right; the brave es were not wrong ”For Christ and the Church”
universities were set up in the wilderness of New England; for the large service of the State they have been founded and maintained at public cost in every section of the country where hanies across the prairies and Rocky Mountains down to the Golden Gate Founded pri, their teachers have been not only scientists and linguists, philosophers and historians, but eous convictions, refined and noble tastes Set as these teachers have been upon a hill, their light has at no period of our country's history been hid They have fore factor in our civilization, and in their own beautiful characters have continually shown us how to coion and life, the ideal and practical, the huer influences to be had froifts I have nae We all know young , who are as cultivated, rational, resourceful, and happy as any people we knoho excel in every one of these particulars the college graduates about thee education And we see young reat chances there, and afterwards curiously careless and wasteful of the best things in life While all this is true, it is true too that to the open-irl of moderate health, ability, self-control, and studiousness, a college course offers thehappiness and health, good friends and high ideals, pere capacity for usefulness in the world It has been well said that the ability to see great things large and little things small is the final test of education The foes of life, especially of wo to escape to the rule of right reason, where all things are possible, and life becoe, with the best teachers and collections in the world, can by its oer impart all this to any woman But if one has set her face in that direction, where else can she find sovoices in the air, so hts?