_A Word to the Wise_
We train for basket-ball, golf, tennis or for whatever sport we have the
most liking. Is there any reason why we should not use the same
intelligence in the approach to our general school life? Is there any
reason why we should make an obstacle race, however good and amusing
exercise that may be, out of _all_ our school life? We don't expect to
win a game with a sprained wrist or ankle, and there really is no reason
why we should plan to sprain the back of school or college life by
avoidable mistakes.
The writer believes in the girl who has the capacity for making
mistakes,--that headlong, energetic spirit which blunders all too
easily. But the writer knows how much those mistakes hurt and how much
energy might be saved for a life that, with just a pinch less of
blunder, might be none the less savoury. School and college are no place
for vocal soloists, and after some of us have sung so sweetly and so
long at home, with every one saying, "Just hear Mary sing, isn't it
wonderful!" it is rather trying, you know, to go to a place where vocal
solos are not popular. And we wish some one--at least I did--had told us
all about this fact as well as other facts of school life. Anyway it
should be a comfort to have a book lying on the table in our school or
college room, or at home, which will tell us why Mary, after having been
a famous soloist at home made a failure or a great success in chorus
work at school. Such a book is something like having a loaded gun in
readiness for the robber. We may never use the shotgun or the book but
they are there, with the reassuring sense of shot in the locker.
It is something, is it not, to have a little book which will tell you
how to get into school and how to get out (for at times there seem to be
difficulties in both these directions)--in short, to tell you something
of many things: your first year at school or college, your part in the
school life, the friendships you will make, your study and how to work
in it, the pleasure and right kind of spirit involved in work, the quiet
times, as well as the jolly times, out-of-doors, your summers and how to
spend them, what the school has tried to do for you; and, as you go out
into the world, some of the aspects, whether you are to be wife,
secretary or teacher, of the work which you will do. Of one thing you
may be certain; that behind every sentence of this little book is
experience, that here are only those opinions of which experience has
made a good, wholesome zwieback.
I wish to take this opportunity to thank my friend, Mrs. Belle Kellogg
Towne, editor of _The Girls' Companion_ and _Young People's Weekly_,
Chicago, for her coöperation in allowing me to use half the material in
this little book; also Dr. C. R. Blackall, of Philadelphia.
_Camp Runway._ J. M.
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