Read Ebook: A Girl's Student Days and After by Marks Jeannette Augustus Woolley Mary Emma Commentator

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Such a conception of a classroom is not fair-play. The teacher, like the coxswain of a college crew, may have rowed over the same course and she may know it well enough to cover it in the dark; she may have won distinction upon it, may be the fittest person in all the states of the Union to cover it again, but if she has not a good or a winning crew to coach, she will never win any race, even the shortest. No instructor has shoulders equal to such a multiple burden as coaching, steering and doing all the rowing, too. To play any classroom game in this spirit is to be dead weight for every one else embarked upon the same adventure. It is not fair-play.

The basket-ball team cannot win, or even play, unless all the members are playing together. Each one is needed despite the fact that she may not be one of the chief or best players. Just so does the class need all its students. If a girl is only average, it is not fair-play for her to sit back and do nothing; neither is it fair-play for her to monopolize the attention if she happens to be more than commonly able. It is not fair-play to laugh at the girl who is at a disadvantage, or to appear bored. It is unfair to the individual, to the classroom in general and to the instructor. The least she can do in this class game is to give her whole and her courteous attention.

Think of all the practice games in which the average athletic team takes part. What can be said for the student who comes into the classroom unprepared to lift her own weight, unprepared to help others? When one comes to think about it from the fair-play point of view there is nothing to be said for her. Nor is it fair-play for a girl to allow herself to get into such a state physically that she is unable to study. How often and often have fudge-heads--due to an application to too much sugar and not to books--sitting row after row killed a school or even a whole college! Before a class tempered by fudge and not by wholesome outdoor living and conscientious devotion to work, the teacher might better put away her notes and close her book. Nothing can happen through or over that barricade of fudge-heads.

And it is not fair-play to cram because of time lost, or for any other cause. The only end of cramming is that the student soon forgets all that has been learned. Alone by normal, slow acquisition and all the associations formed in such learning can information come to us to stay. It may not be particularly wicked to cram if one has plenty of time to waste, but it is foolish unless one has.

There is a kind of gossip in which a girl takes part, made up of snap-shot judgments of the classroom, idle carping about some little unimportant point, expression of wounded vanity and unfair talk, which may mean a tremendous loss of prestige for a really admirable course; it may mean that girls, who would naturally go into it because of their liking or gift for the work, do not go or go in a critical and unsympathetic attitude. If there is a complaint to be made about any course it should be made to the responsible person concerned, and that is usually the teacher. Anything else is not fair-play. In the classroom the instructor is the "coach" of the game and she is the person with whom to talk. It is needless to say that if a girl is putting nothing into a course she cannot expect to get anything out of it, or to complain because things do not "go." If she wants them to "go" why does she not help, and have the profit of taking something away from the work as interest on her effort? A girl gets dividends only from work into which she has put some brain-capital.

And the people at home? Is it fair-play to them, when they are making sacrifices of money or of happiness to keep the daughter at school, for her not to put good work into her study and play her part faithfully in the classroom game? So many things have to be taken into consideration of which we are not likely to think. There is the girl herself, the other girls with whom she is working, the instructor, the people at home, the institution that is providing an expensive equipment or plant through the philanthropic efforts of others or the taxation of the public. If the girl does not play her part fairly, there is a rather big reckoning against her, is there not?

THE RIGHT SORT OF LEISURE

The right sort of leisure ought to help as much in the development of the girl as the right sort of work. If it is leisure worthy the name, it will bring refreshment; it will not leave one physically and mentally jaded. Neither mind nor body should ever be exhausted because of the way in which freedom has been used. Leisure is as important to work as work is to leisure. A person who has not worked cannot appreciate freedom, while the one who has had no leisure is not best fitted for work. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy;" it is just as true that it makes Jill a dull girl. The girl who works all the time, not realizing the importance of free moments, becomes fagged in body and mind. She is a tool that is dull, and would do well to remember that even a machine is better for an occasional rest.

Some mistaken ideas about leisure have grown up, making it difficult to say anything on this subject without being misunderstood. Stories--whole books of them--about "spreads" and more or less lawless escapades in school and college, have given girls and other people, too, the impression that this is the sort of thing school leisure is. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Midnight feasts may occur in school, and most of us, unless we are too good to be average girls, have taken part in them. But such stories are vicious, for they misrepresent the life by suggesting that eating inferior and unwholesome food is the real freedom most girls desire. There is something repulsive in the very thought. Feasts that leave a girl with a coated tongue and a dull head and Monday "blues" do not fairly represent school or college leisure. Good times that interfere with good work have no place in ideally free hours. But, indeed, the odours from the chafing-dishes do suggest that some of the girls are trying to put into literal execution the wish of a great German professor in Oxford. The professor, eager to try a dish he saw on the hotel bill of fare, but with his English and German verbs not quite disentangled, said to the waiter, "Hereafter I vish to become a Velsh Rabbit." Perhaps becoming a Welsh rarebit represents the height of some girls' ideals, but this is hard to believe.

The possession of leisure depends to a great extent upon the will power. The girl who has never learned to say "No," who has no power of selection, cannot expect to have any hours for her own use. She is quarry for every idle suggestion, every social engagement, every executive "job" which pursues her. The girl who engages all her time socially cannot have a sense of leisure, for she turns her playtime into but another schedule, to be met as inexorably as her academic courses. Her days become a formidable array of "dates," often stretching ahead for weeks. Even if girls are not determined to have it for themselves, they should give to others some opportunity for freedom, and should respect their possible desire for solitude. The girl who engages or annexes every particle of time, her own or that of some one else with whom she comes in contact, is making leisure an impossibility. The girl who leaves no margin cannot hope for even the spirit of freedom.

Many students excuse themselves for much executive work in school and college on the ground that it is done in their leisure. That girl is a goose who allows herself through any sense of self-importance, or irreplaceable usefulness, to be so involved in executive work that all other aspects of her school life are slighted. If she refuses to be swamped by such "jobs" she can have the happiness of reflecting that probably some girls who need the training far more than she does are doing the work. To every girl will come the opportunity right along for "managing"; club and social work will bring it, and a good-sized family will bring it as nothing else can. But school leisure she will not have again. The whole aim of the school is to enrich the lives of its students, and it knows all too well that that student who does not keep for herself the leisure upon which body and mind and soul must feed is indeed poor.

There is one way in which leisure is very generally misspent in school--and alas, outside, too!--not in managing one's own affairs, but in managing and discussing the affairs of others. At such times the remarks may be superlatively pleasant, but they are more often superlatively disagreeable. It may be said with truthfulness that they are almost never moderate or just. Everything is all black or all white, with no gray. It makes one think of the little girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead:

"When she was good, she was very, very good, And when she was bad, she was horrid."

But, alas! the poor wretches discussed are not allowed even the natural and somewhat happy human alternation between badness and goodness. No, indeed, they are monsters of a desperate character--they may at the moment be broken-heartedly conscious of their own faults--or they are shining six-winged angels. And, woe! this sort of thing comes almost as hard upon the angels. They can't endure it; so much goodness breaks down their wing arches, and the glorious ones crumple together like tissue-paper.

And upon the girls busily engaged in creating angels of loveliness and gargoyles of ugliness, this sort of conversation works havoc. It does not invigorate them, it does not inspire them. It belittles their minds--thank fortune, that making kindling wood of the characters of other people does do this!--and stunts their finer feelings. This sin, that they "do by two and two," they pay for one by one. Gentle and considerate feelings are lost, time is wasted, a vicious habit,--almost no habit is more vicious,--is acquired. Such gossip can never become a pure enjoyment; it remains at the best an ignoble, discreditable excitement. Rolling these sweet morsels under their tongues, a taste for ill-natured or exaggerated comment fixes itself in their mouths. Even if they have consciences that, like good mothers, will occasionally wash their mouths out with soap, they retain the disturbing memory of unkind, coarse, or foolish words.

Yet school should be the last place in which to indulge in idle talk. Such indulgence is against all the idealism of student life. Idle or meddlesome talk never helps any one, either the one who talks or the one who is discussed. If you have anything to say about other people, and if going to them will help you, the only friendly thing to do--it is not an easy thing--is to speak to the people concerned. If we really knew how to put ourselves in other people's places, no unkind, unfriendly words would ever be spoken again. There would be things hard to bear said--rebuke or reproof are never easy to receive--but nothing unfriendly. Think how idle, ill-natured talk flows around the world, and then think what a different world it would be if there were none of it! It is to human life what the blights, the scales, the insect pests are to tree and flower. Fortunately, as people grow older they come to think themselves less infallible, and as they grow wiser they become more tender and more lenient in their judgments.

In companionship whose leisure interests are good there is a sense of freedom filled full and running over, of minds and hearts doubly rich, of good times doubly jolly. But on the whole, girls have too little absolute solitude; there is scarcely a girl in twenty, except the "dig," who is alone at all. One trouble with dormitory school life is that it fosters leisure-wasting and time-wasting "gang" habits. A girl so surrounded never wants to be alone a moment, either indoors or out. With such, the blessing and blessedness of solitude should be learned, for solitude rightly used makes strong men and women.

The woman who has leisure has a grasp upon time, is master of it instead of being mastered by it. It is the girl whirled around in a squirrel cage of pointless weekly and Sunday engagements who is oppressed and mastered by her lack of freedom. And then there is the hard-pressed future; we must lay up some leisure for that. The time when one is most hurried is the time when one most needs the sense of freedom. The story of the old Quaker lady who had so much to do she didn't know where to begin, and so took a nap, is profoundly full of wisdom. When the old lady woke up she found she had plenty of time after all, not because she had done anything but because she had come again into a leisurely frame of mind.

Leisure means neither a blank mind nor an empty hand. It means a holiday taken with an eager mind, with eyes keen in their delight and knowledge, with hands capable of some beauty or some use. All of us have leisure to think, but not all of us think. Some of us, if friends come in unexpectedly, will quickly pick up something and pretend to be busy. When Watt sat by the fire watching the steam from the teakettle lift the lid, he was not precisely idle. The powerful, indispensable steam-engine was the result. One reason, aside from all religious considerations, why we need a quiet Sunday, is that we may have that sense of freedom which feeds mind and body, and even the crumbs of whose profitableness have made the world rich in great inventions, in great pictures, in wonderful books.

THE OUTDOOR RUNWAY

Some girls--and there are more girls of this type than there are boys--put in their outdoor life as a stop-gap. It is inconceivable that this should be true, yet it is true. Apathetically the students have exercised sixty minutes, considering this minimum quite sufficient. Not a particle of zest do they reveal in the exercise taken. They do not seem to know or they do not care that the fields and woods should be full, not only of health and all that goes with it, including success, but also of the best of friends who all have their good points worthy of notice and imitation, in quick leap, cheerful voice and blithe song. What are sixty minutes in this great outdoor runway? Not a tithe of the twenty-four hours and at best only half of what the minimum should be. Exercise should be taken even if nothing else in the school life is. And I say this advisedly, for health is the basis on which not only the future of the woman's life must depend but also that of the race. Good health, the inheritance of it, its maintenance and increase, neither the girl nor her parents can ever hold as too sacred a trust. That it is a sacred trust the schools are recognizing more and more, and provisions are being made, especially in the public schools, for the defective in health as well as for the strong. The outdoor school, at first an object that attracted universal attention, is now being taken quite for granted. Foolish the girl who does not learn to take the outdoor runway for granted, too, and go out to it in high spirits to learn its wisdom, to take part in its joys and to receive its health.

It may be accepted as a new axiom--the more exercise the less fool. Strong, able muscles, steady nerves , a clean skin open at all its pores and doing its eliminative work thoroughly, and clean strong vitals make up the kind of beauty within the reach of all womanhood, and the physical beauty which she should most desire. The day is coming when our ideal of what is physically perfect--not spiritually, for Christianity has carried us beyond anything that Greece ever knew--will be more like the Greek in its entirety, its emphasis upon the harmony of the whole body. The body is a mechanism to be exquisitely cared for--self-running, it is true, and yet in need of intelligent attention. Think of the care an engineer gives his engine, and it is by no manner of means so wonderfully and so intricately fashioned as these bodies of ours on which our happiness, our working ability, even our very goodness depend. Health as a safeguard to one's whole moral being is coming into more and more recognition, and not only as a safeguard but also as a cultivator of all that is best in us spiritually. There are people very ill, or permanent invalids, whose great victory it is to be among the saints of the earth, but that it is easier to be good when one is well no one will deny. Every big school has now its class or classes in corrective or medical gymnastics, in which stooping shoulders, ewe necks, curved spines, flat insteps, small waists and narrow chests are rectified as far as possible in the limited hours of the school days.

The time is coming when parents will consider it a disgrace to allow their children to be physically undeveloped. The physician, always in advance of the community for which he cares, sees how grave in moral or intellectual import physical defects may be. The educational world, alive to new messages for the reconstruction of its educational ideal, begins also to place more and more emphasis upon the physical care and development of its students--and not by any manner of means for physical reasons only but because the whole girl or the whole boy is better spiritually and mentally for having a body that is strong and well. The whole being keeps better time, just as a watch does, for having clean works. No one has the right to shut out the fresh air or the sunshine; no girl should remain undeveloped physically through lack of exercise when she could, through exercise, make herself strong. Even to abuse her feet, the important centre of many important nerves, by tight shoes, is wrong; so is it to rack her spine and upset or throw out of position all the delicate and wonderfully fashioned organs of the abdominal cavity by the wearing of high French heels. Undoubtedly, however, American motherhood and girlhood represent something more and more intelligent; indeed, in physical culture women are beginning to keep step with men, and it is upon this fact that school and college depend in their splendid efforts to make the sum of feminine vitality, despite the pressure of modern civilization, plus rather than minus.

It is true, too, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that the country boy and the country girl are more resourceful than their city cousins. Out-of-doors they have had to use their wits and have not been spoiled by all the appliances of city life. Out-of-doors, too, they have made invaluable friendships with bird and squirrel and rabbit and deer, friendships whose intelligent wood-life has taught them much. Self-reliance is one of the lessons of the outdoor runway; and wisdom and inspiration come from it when they are needed. About this truth the work of the poet Wordsworth is one long poem. Again and again he writes of the perfect woman shaped by the influences of nature. Of her he says:

"Three years she grew in sun and shower; Then Nature said, 'A lovelier flower On earth was never sown; This child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A lady of my own.

"'Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse: and with me The girl in rock and plain, In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power To kindle and restrain.

"'She shall be sportive as the fawn That wild with glee across the lawn Or up the mountain springs; And hers shall be the breathing balm, And hers the silence and the calm Of mute, insensate things.

"'The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face!'"

There are various kinds of outdoor life, some one of which is within reach of every human being, even if they are cripples. Probably most girls when the outdoor life of school and college is spoken of think that athletics is meant. That is one part of the outdoor runway, and since it is provided in every school, and insisted upon, but little about it need be said. It is doing its work with more and more inspiration, as the response to its ideals comes in. And it does something more in every well-equipped school than merely make a girl use her legs and arms: it gives her a large, sane ideal of health and provides her with the means of keeping well. There is no more useful profession for the woman seeking one that is useful as well as remunerative than physical culture.

There is another aspect of the outdoor runway of which less is said. I mean gardening, or the care of live stock of some kind, or bee culture. This is practical remunerative work which for the girl living at home and going to school should serve famously as a grass-cure; it would keep her out-of-doors with profit to both her health and her purse. And then there is another kind of grass-cure: the outdoor life out-of-doors, to be taken in long country walks, in fishing expeditions, in picnics, in camping or wherever roads, hills, meadows and brooks lead. Finally, there is the outdoor life indoors. This life insists upon windows open to the air and open to the sunshine, and this life every one of us may have all the time.

A GIRL'S SUMMER

Any girl who settles down to a summer with the idea of doing nothing, or in an aimless, not-knowing-what-to-do-next fashion, lessens her opportunities for pleasure. Pleasure is not idleness, although in the minds of a great many people who have not thought very much it is. The right sort of leisure is full of opportunities for doing interesting things.

There are some girls who look upon their summers as an escape from the slavery of their school year. There are others who think of their summers as something to be endured until they can go back to the more or less selfish freedom of the school. Neither is the right way. The summer ought not to be an entirely frivolous season, neither ought it to be too workaday. If a girl has work to do, everything should be so arranged as not to deprive the vacation of its recreative side. On the other hand the summer should be all the happier because of a definite object to be accomplished. Something is wrong with a girl unless she finds both summer and winter full of opportunity and pleasure.

No one can possibly do all the delightful or useful things which may be done in a single summer. In these months there is opportunity for growth just as in the winter--perhaps more opportunity physically. And intellectually there is much to be seen and observed. For the girl who can, it is well to plan to be out-of-doors as much as possible. For some, there are opportunities for camping, for long walks, for gardening, to learn how to do certain physically useful things, to row, swim and ride. Only an extraordinary emergency would deprive a girl of all the out-of-door exercise which she needs. If she isn't able to be by the sea or in the mountains, in almost all cities there is opportunity for exercise and games. With a short car ride she can go to golf links, to tennis courts, into the country. In many semi-citified homes there is space for a girl to do some gardening, one of the most profitable of pleasures, good for the girl and good for the home. Many homes would be much more attractive if there were more of the garden spirit in them. But if there is no chance for this, there can always be physical culture, an opportunity to build one's self up in health, to live sanely and wisely, to get plenty of sleep, and to take corrective exercise. In physical culture a girl should find out what she most needs--almost any gymnastic instructor in school or college would be glad to outline work--and then in ten or fifteen minute exercises develop herself along those lines.

For the girl with means there is the chance for travel, a splendid opportunity to cultivate many virtues of which the young traveller seldom thinks: patience, adaptability, seeing the bright side of things. Travelling may be made a very important part of education. It is too bad that some people of limited horizon take it simply as a chance to aggrandize themselves, something to boast about and with which to bore their friends by repeated accounts of what they did "abroad." The great Doctor Samuel Johnson, the compiler of the famous dictionary and author of "Rasselas," heartily disliked young travellers, for, he said, "They go too raw to make any great remarks." Travelling, if it is what it should be, is an educational opening. In this way can be gained a background for history, for literature, for sociology, and a vivid and living knowledge of geography. Merely running about with a guide-book will not achieve these ends, although a guide-book is a very important asset: sympathy, trying to understand what one sees, will. Travelling takes away provincialism because it broadens the outlook. In a very real sense the world becomes one's home.

The girl who is not able to move about or actually travel may travel in books. She should be ashamed to read what is harmful or merely cheap, but further than that it may not much matter. Let her read the Little Books, if she wishes, and the Great Little Books. As surely as the magnet swings towards the pole will the Great Little Books take her to the Great Big Books. She will be drawn on and up in her reading, and will have cultivated a love for reading which is far more important than perfunctory knowledge of the classics.

Just as any books that are good point towards books that are better, so should the good work of a girl's school year be turning her mind towards the future and her work as a mature woman. In the summer she has time to assimilate all she has done, to get her bearings, and to plan wisely for the year, or years, to come. For a girl of strong physique the summer vacation gives an opportunity to add towards what she is going to do eventually; to specialize in some line of work, to take a library, or scientific, course. Many girls, however, who wish to spend their summer in this fashion ought not to consider it, for they are not strong enough. It is well for them to remember that it is the quality of work that counts rather than the quantity. Often the quality of a girl's work for an ensuing school year depends upon her freedom from study during the summer. Students should be very sure, if they undertake work in the summer, that it is not done simply from a nervous desire to go on regardless of the quality of the work done. But for those in perfect health this is an opportunity to try their powers in different ways in order to discover what it is they really wish to do. A summer so spent may keep many a girl from slipping into teaching just because it seems the only thing she can do. Such a salvation will be twofold, for it will save not only the girl, but also a profession overcrowded with loveless followers. There are so many needs to be filled by a woman's work that it is her duty to look for some vocation for which she is truly adapted, to get out of the ruts of those professions into which women flock because they have no initiative.

Often a girl thinks only of what she will do with her own summer without thinking of what she will do with her mother's or her father's summer. For nine or ten months they have been thinking of what they could do for her. Sometimes girls do not realize the actual need of help and of companionship which those at home feel, and the older people are too unselfish to force this need upon their juniors. Between the unselfishness of those who are older and the self-centredness of those who are younger, there is often sad havoc made in a home. A girl who, after a year's absence and all that has been done for her, can't adjust herself to those who need her, has still something to learn.

If older people cannot do without the buoyancy of the young, the young cannot very well afford to forget the mother and father who have much, although no word may be didactically spoken, to teach them. Let the girl take her summer not only as an opportunity to grow closer to her family but also as a chance to learn home-making, to train herself in the practical things of the home. This practical training is often a very valuable supplement to the school work. The time is passed when the learned woman who is unable to do anything for herself is the ideal--if she ever has been that. The inability to make a home for herself, to do all the necessary things daintily, detracts from a woman's power. In practical ways a woman should be both dainty and capable. Parents, as well as girls, sometimes forget or do not clearly recognize the fact that no school, no college, can take the place of the home, that schools are not primarily schools in home-making, but rather schools of general education. The summer is a good time for the girl to find her place again in the home life, and for both parents and children to rejoice in the pleasures of the home--pleasures and opportunities which no institutional life can give.

FROM THE SCHOOL TO THE GIRL

What the school is able to do for the girl depends very largely upon the girl herself. The majority of people with whom she comes in contact do not take that into consideration, and the school is held unfairly responsible for the girl. All any school can do is to use the material it finds. Some one has said, with harsh but true emphasis, that a college does not make a fool, it simply helps in the development of one. As an illustration of its limitations, a school sends out two girls from the same class; one girl it is proud to have taken as a type, the other it is sorry to have represent it. Yet both have been under exactly the same influence. Students do not realize how fearfully at their mercy a school is, or that, so far as reputation is concerned, it is they who make or mar its credit.

If the school training is worth anything at all, it makes the most of unpromising material. Its really discouraging experience is not with the girl of limited ability who gives her best and so in some sense gets the best, but with the student who doesn't give her best and who, because of her own indifference, is always misrepresenting the training she is receiving. No school ever wishes to have its ideals confused by a vulgar display of wealth or by loud or conspicuous behaviour. Yet many a school, with ideals all that they should be, is misjudged in public places because of some thoughtless or unreliable girls. This doesn't seem like fair-play or team-play, does it? The fineness of life ought to be felt and expressed in student behaviour. Yet how often it is not!

Another way in which the ideals of a school or college are misrepresented is by lack of intellectual integrity. Any school informed with a large spirit wishes to meet its students on a platform of absolute trust,--a platform which makes precautions against dishonesty unnecessary. Just so long as a school must be vigilant in order to keep a few students from unfair behaviour, just so long is it prevented from meeting them all on a basis of absolute trust. Why should girls excuse themselves for classroom dishonesty? What would they think of a girl who cheated in basket-ball? Would they condone that? Until student government has recognized absolute intellectual integrity as a part of its ideas, it will not have achieved its end. The rock on which all scholarship is founded is honour. Lack of honour is fatal to its ideal. "Cribbing," often excused by people who do not stop to think, is the small beginning of a big evil.

Many a large institution is like an anxious mother, not always infallible in wisdom, but personally interested in and eager for the success of the individual. A successful girl brings credit to her school, for she demonstrates, as nothing else can, the fact that the school is achieving its purpose in service to the community. How much this encouragement is needed, girls do not realize, for they do not know all the difficulties which institutions, especially technical and collegiate, have to meet in sending their students out into the world. In finding a position for a student, the school has to consider the whole girl. It may care greatly for an attractive personality and yet see that its possessor is lacking in qualities of faithfulness and accuracy, and that with its utmost endeavour it has never been able to correct these faults. On the other hand, the school may have those students whose manners, whose dress, whose personality, whose spelling, whose awkwardly expressed notes, whose lack of promptness, make against success in any capacity.

Another point for which the school looks in recommending its students is physical fitness, which shows itself in many different ways: in voice, in carriage, in attractiveness, in staying power. One teacher who had an excellent record as a student and was, besides, a fine girl, had so unpleasant and absurd a voice that her students were in a continual state of amusement and would learn nothing from her. A great many teachers have lost in power because of a poor voice, strident, or lifeless, or husky, or falsetto. A poor enunciation, or words that do not carry, are ineffectual means by which to reach a class, to hold a customer, or to introduce one's self favourably to the interest of others. For a girl who is going to have any part in public life--and most girls do nowadays--a good voice is an absolute essential. And it is well for us to remember that the voice is not something superficial, but that it is the expression of that which is within.

Another way in which physical fitness shows itself is in the carriage. A girl who carries herself with erectness and energy brings a certain conviction with her of fitness for many things, of self-respect, of ability, and reveals in her bearing something of her mind as well as of her body. We are always tempted to think a person who "slumps" physically may slump in other ways. A good carriage, good voice, and strong, clean, digestive system are far more important than beauty of features.

There is another matter at which the school in placing its students must look. To be a desirable candidate for a good position a girl need not be expensively gowned, but she must be daintily and freshly dressed. Immaculate shirt waist, a plain, well-made skirt, with good shoes, stockings and gloves and a quiet, pretty hat, are all any woman needs in meeting her business obligations. And that daintiness which she shows in her dress she must show in her person too, in clean skin and finger-nails, good teeth, and smooth, attractively arranged hair.

It is very important for the interests of a school, as well as for the individual, to place its students advantageously. To have them succeed widens its sphere of usefulness and influence and opens new channels of service. Every college puts itself to considerable expense in looking out for the interests of its students, for the glory of a great school lies not only in the people whom it collects into its midst, but even more in those whom it sends out. A girl has no right to go so lightly through her school life that she fails to see in it all the self-sacrifice and effort and ambitions that have gone into the building up of what is her privilege and opportunity. In so far as she does this she fails in the team-play spirit. Why should a girl think that she can spend her father's money, or the means of her school, thoughtlessly? What would happen to her if she did this with the funds of her basket-ball team? Yet girls waste the resources of their school by carelessness with its property, a carelessness that collectively mounts up into thousands of dollars, and never once stop to think how difficult every big school finds it to make ends meet.

Before it is too late, at least now that she is leaving school, let her stop to realize that a great deal of the work for an institution is along the line of self-sacrifice, in the gifts given, in the work of its administrators and teachers. This unselfishness means a financial loss, for business ability might be invested in more lucrative ways; it means a social sacrifice, for there is a certain kind of impersonality which is demanded in work that deals with a continually changing community; it means risk in the great strain put upon physical and nervous strength; it means forgetting one's self; for the true teacher is willing to be forgotten when she has served others. What a school may accomplish for its students is its only compensation for all this self-sacrifice.

THE WORK TO BE

One of the qualities a girl who has completed her school or college life needs to show for a few months more than anything else is the quality of adjustment, for she will find that she must continually adjust herself to new conditions whether they be of the home or elsewhere. All the time through school she has been in some sense a centre of interest. Her class has been an important factor in the academic life. When she has gone home it has been as a school or college girl, and she has been of interest because she brought that life into the home. But now the attitude of others towards her is different. She ceases to be the centre of attention, and for her a day of serious readjustment is at hand. Perhaps in her own estimate she has seemed even more important than she really was. She is likely now to swing from a sense of self-importance to an injured feeling of insignificance, and to a conviction that people can get along quite as well without her. Up to this time when she has gone home she has been an honoured visitor. But now that she is at home to stay, instead of becoming the centre she is merely part of the family circle with its obligation of doing for others. Her presence in the household is no longer a novelty.

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