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.