A girl ought to take up her study with the same sense of pleasure as
that with which a strong workman enters his shop, knowing his tools and
able to use them. Having good tools and knowing them is certainly part
of the joy of work. And what are the tools the student must use? Well,
for the average student, the one that is first and most important is
_Good Health_. The mind is not as clear if the body is not in good
health, clean within and without.
The second set of tools consists of a different sort of equipment and
apparatus, tools with which a girl must become familiar and which she
must know how to use--_Books_, _Library_, _Laboratory_ and _Classroom_.
Why shouldn't a student be just as able to use her books as a carpenter
his plane or saw? One couldn't expect a fumbling carpenter or a clumsy
seamstress to accomplish much work or good work. There are times when a
girl need not claim to know anything but she must, at least, know where
to find what she wants to know. This is the first lesson in the use of
books; without knowledge of them or love for them, the student can't get
along at all. And beyond this somewhat mechanical use of books there is
a deeper and larger lesson to learn; to know that a book is not merely a
page of print where information may be sought but that it is a mirror in
which one finds the world, its wisdom, its joy, its sorrow, its divine
adventures. Robert Southey, the friend of the poet Coleridge, has
written beautifully on the subject in a little poem called "His Books."
Another tool in the student's workshop is _Previously Acquired
Knowledge_: that is, what one has in one's mind. Some people's minds are
junk-shops. But a junk-shop is better than an empty shop. This
previously acquired knowledge, if used rightly, becomes the tool of
later courses, the servant of later years. Our stored-up facts--many of
them--have not been an end in themselves. How could they be? For
example, such things as paradigms and formulæ and long lists of names
and dates, are tools pure and simple; but the student in the workshop
must have them or she will be like a carpenter who had much to do but on
coming to his bench found no tools there and so was idle all day.
A fourth tool for the girl in her study--one that cannot be deliberately
acquired, as information or apparatus or even health can be--is
_Experience_. This is the most valuable tool of all--one's experience of
travel, with people, in responsibility, in love, in joy, in sorrow, in
any kind of work. The girls who are the most interesting in the
classroom are the girls who are not contenting themselves with apparatus
alone but whose minds are flexible with experience, who bring all of
themselves, their life, to bear upon the work. A certain well-known
minister had prepared a sermon for his usual Sunday engagement, but
half an hour before service another text came into his mind. He could
not forget it, so he jotted down notes and preached the new sermon
instead of the one that had been prepared. This sermon made a great
impression on all who heard it, and the minister himself said of it that
some people would declare that it had been thought out in half an hour,
but that really he had put fifty years of his life into it. The sharper
and better the tools, the finer the character of the work. If experience
has been observed and retained, and previously acquired knowledge is
ready for service, and hand and mind know how to use books, and the
student is in good condition physically, then the excellence of that
girl's work in the class and out can be guaranteed.
And now what are the uses of the work which these tools can accomplish
for us? Coleridge wrote in his poem, "Work Without Hope,"
"Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live."
The only hope that can last is hope that is not wholly centred in
ourselves, but has some thought for others and our service to them. Work
devoid of inspiration and ideals, work done merely for one's self, study
pursued with only a degree as an end or for the sake of "pay" as a
teacher, turns school and college into a market-place, a place of
barter, where in exchange for so much energy and so much money we may
acquire a certain position and livelihood. Only that work in which one
has the consciousness of being, or becoming, useful to others, brings
joy that will endure. What do we think of the minister who is without a
sense of consecration? The responsibility of the student or the teacher
is quite as large, the opportunity for service quite as wonderful. One
of our greatest English poets, William Wordsworth, exclaimed: "I wish to
be considered as a teacher, or as nothing!" The calling of the teacher,
of the student, has through all time been thought a high one,--one that
has drawn to itself fine and unselfish spirits. The life of the student,
no matter how necessary to the world its market-places are, never has
been and never can be a life of barter, of trade.
The wealth that comes to the student should not be an exclusive
possession. It may be bought at a large price but it can never be sold.
It must be given away, or shared, for it is wealth which carries with it
a sense of social responsibility. It is enjoyed for a double purpose,
not only for the sake of the happiness it brings to us but also for the
sake of the joy or help it may bring to others. Millions of girls covet
the opportunities that come to a few in school and college, many of them
who far more greatly deserve this privilege than we. Indeed, what have
most of us done to merit the right to all that we have? The only way in
which we can show our sense of justice is by taking our privileges as
something to share with others. The girl who has health, pleasant
surroundings and work worth doing, has all a human being has a right to
expect. She ought always to be happy, always rejoicing in her work and
always eager to divide her wealth with others.
The redeeming feature of royalties has been their sense of
responsibility for their subjects! In great disasters, or calamities,
their first thought has been to go to the relief of the people. The King
and Queen of Italy are noble examples of this courage and unselfishness.
In America the only "privileged" class is the highly educated. It is
they from whom _noblesse oblige_ must be expected, who will show in all
emergencies their sense of responsibility, who will share all that they
have with others. A girl will be happy, she will grow, she will be a
leverage power for good with those among whom she lives, only in so far
as she uses her tools of knowledge in the service of others, and shapes
all that she does towards some humanly useful end.