You are about to leave school. The occasion is one certainly that cannot
fail to awaken reflection. I suppose that no young lady, who had been at
a place of education as long as you have been here, ever left it without
serious thought. The excitement of the examination, the busy whirl of
preparation for leaving, even the exhilarating anticipations of
home-going, cannot entirely shut out from your mind the sober truth that
the end of school-days is only the beginning of another career,--a
career, the issue of which you can neither foresee, nor can you be
indifferent to it. Let us talk a little about this.
The day on which a young man ends his College course is called, by an
apparent misnomer, "Commencement" day; that is, the day of commencing,
or beginning. I understand very well that the name has a definite
historical origin,--that in the old English Colleges, from which our
American Colleges were modelled, the young man, on this day, begins his
career as a Bachelor of Arts. His academical rank "commences" and dates
from this point. But there would be a beautiful appropriateness in the
term, even if it had no such special historical origin. The exit from
the curriculum of the College or School, is, in truth, only the entrance
into a more extended course. When your studies are nominally ended, they
have really only begun. The longer you live, the more will you
understand that the period of school-going is not the only, or even the
main time of learning. The more thoroughly you have been taught here,
the more certainly will you be a learner hereafter. I want no better
test of the character of a school than the extent to which the idea
prevails among its pupils and alumni, that it is a place for "finishing"
one's studies. The idea is on a par with that of the young Miss who
reported that she had read through Latin!
There is, it is true, in this School, a definite curriculum of studies,
and that curriculum you have honorably completed. You have just been
received by public acknowledgment into the community of educated women.
But you will be false to the honorable sisterhood, false, I am sure, to
all the teachings you have received here, if you entertain for a moment
the thought that no further intellectual acquisitions are before you.
The branches which you have learned thus far are chiefly valuable to you
for the power they have given you to make still further improvement. The
studies pursued at school, and during the period of youth, are mainly
intended for promoting intellectual growth, for giving us power, for
perfecting our mental machinery. Our real acquisitions come afterward. I
speak, of course, of those who occupy the higher stations in society. To
one who has to earn his bread by mere bodily toil, the few studies for
which he has leisure in youth, must, of course, be such as are directly
serviceable in his calling. But to those who claim to belong to the
educated portion of the community, school studies are of right directed
more to the development of the mental and moral powers, than to positive
acquisition. Your instructors return you to your friends and your home
with a mind enlarged, with a taste refined, with a judgment corrected,
ready to take your place and act well your part, as an educated woman.
But remember, she is not an educated woman, who knows no more this year
than she did last. True education is growth, and it never stands still.
The tree which has ceased to grow, has begun to decay.
This, then, is the one thought that I would have you take away with you
from school. Give no place to the idea that henceforth books and study
and elegant culture are to be laid aside. It would be a dishonor to your
School, and a mistake of the first magnitude for yourself.
Perhaps you will appreciate this point more adequately, if you will turn
your thoughts inward for a moment, and reflect upon the change which
has been quietly going on in your own self and during your residence
here. One whose occupation calls him almost daily to communicate his
ideas to young persons, either by formal address, or by more familiar
ways, feels to a greater degree, perhaps, than any other person can, the
change to which I refer. I mean that increased quickness of intellectual
apprehension produced by a judicious and symmetrical course of study.
Let me give you an instance. It fell to my lot, not long since, to
address a School containing three hundred young ladies, all boarders,
all over seventeen years of age. They were the best audience I ever had.
Among them was not one, who did not appear to be intelligent and
thoughtful, and with a mind more or less disciplined. But there were
perceptible differences among them, and it is to this point that I would
direct your attention. They were divided into four distinct classes,
having attended the School severally one, two, three, and four years,
and they were arranged before me in the order of their seniority as
classes. The discourse was long and didactic, and portions of it were
not easy to follow, containing a discussion of a rather abstruse point
in mental philosophy. Now it seemed to me, on concluding the address,
that I could have gone through that assembly, and marked with tolerable
accuracy, class by class, just where each class ended and another class
began, simply by what I had read in the faces of my young auditors. It
was written as plainly upon those upturned faces, as was the discourse
itself upon the manuscript before me. Those who had been four years in
the School, undoubtedly learned manifold more from the exercise than
the junior classes did. I could see it in the delivery of every
paragraph. Such is the uniform result of a proper course of study. It
enables the student to grasp new truths with increased ease and
readiness. We, who are teachers, feel this the moment we undertake to
communicate our thoughts to an audience. The consequence is, we
involuntarily measure what has been done educationally for a class of
young persons, by the development which has been given to their
powers,--by the manifest facility which they have gained for making
further gains. That young woman is best educated who is best prepared to
learn.
Let me, then, renew the appeal to your own consciousness. Think for a
moment upon the change which has been wrought in your own self during
your career here. Compare your present self with that other self that
you may remember some three or four years back. How much more you can
accomplish now than you could then! How much more clearly you can follow
out a train of reasoning! How much more easily you can compass an
argument! How much more you can enjoy what is beautiful! How much more
quickly and accurately you can remember! How much more you can command
your attention! Whence this change, and what does it purport? It means
that you are educated. You have now a degree of mental power that you
had not then. Your own consciousness tells you that you are now just in
the condition to enter upon your harvest. The field is before you. You
are girded for the work. And will you now indolently lay aside the
sickle, and let the golden grain fall to the ground ungathered? Could
there be a more egregious mistake? Last week, I saw from my window two
parent birds tempting their young fledglings from the nest. Day by day,
week by week, I had seen the child-birds growing and gaining strength.
Their muscles were now well developed, their bodies were clothed with
feathers, they had learned to use their wings,--they could fly. Would it
not have been passing strange, had they continued as they were,
contented to cower and to crawl, when they had acquired the power to
soar? And will _you_ be content to remain forever only a fledgling,
satisfied with having acquired the power of rising, but never actually
using the wings which these years of honorable industry have given you?
Some of your sex are willing to admit the force of this argument when
applied to men. A man, after graduating, is expected of course to
continue his studies. His whole profession is one continued study. But
somehow, it is thought, this truth does not hold good for women. Let me
hope that _you_ at least will not harbor such a notion. Whatever may be
said of "women's rights," one right certainly, and one duty, is to keep
yourself abreast of the other sex in continued mental growth and
culture, and in general intelligence. If you would awaken true respect
in my sex, and I hold it a not unworthy ambition, you must in this
matter do as we do, at least as those of us do who are worth your
consideration at all. You must perseveringly, every year, add to your
intellectual acquisitions. You must continue steadily to grow in
knowledge and mental power. Do not cease your studies, because you have
ceased going to school. Manage to have some elegant accomplishment or
acquisition always in hand. A woman who is wise in this matter, never
passes her prime. I speak not, of course, of the decrepitude of old age
and of the decay of the faculties. But so long as the faculties remain
unimpaired, a woman may become, and should aim to become, increasingly
attractive, as she advances in years. Poets sing of sweet sixteen. Let
me assure you, a woman may be charming at sixty. Mrs. Madison even at
seventy was the most attractive woman in Washington.
In society, how soon one feels the difference between a person who
reads, and one who does not read. Two ladies may be of the same age.
They may dress alike. They may have the same advantages of person. They
may move in the same social circle. Yet you will not have been ten
minutes in their society, though the conversation has been on only the
most common topics of the day, before you will feel that the one woman,
though at thirty or forty, is still only a superannuated school-girl,
with even less resources than when she left the seminary, while the
other is a delightful companion for persons of any age, with ready
knowledge for whatever turn the conversation may take, and so abounding
in resources as not even to be open to the temptation of making a
display of them. The one can talk only so long as the conversation turns
on dress, gossip, or the discussion of private character. In listening
to the talk of such a woman, you hardly hear a sentence which is not
based upon personalities. Her mind has not been fed and nurtured from
day to day with beautiful and noble thoughts, with history and science
and general knowledge. She may be amiable. She may have personal
beauty. But you find her empty and vapid, and you weary of her, in spite
of the very best intentions of being interested. How different the woman
who, in spite of social exactions, and even of accumulating domestic
duties, and of the time-consuming tax of dress, still keeps her mind
fresh and growing, by means of reading and culture,--who is ever adding
to her stores of knowledge some new science, to her varied skill some
new attainment,--who has ever in hand some new book. It is true, indeed,
that some ladies are blessed with more leisure for this purpose than
others. But I fear it is not a question of more and less. It is too much
a question of some and _none_. I hold that every woman is entitled to
have, and by proper determination she may have, _some_ time for personal
improvement. Remember, we have duties to ourselves, as well as to
others, and we have no duty to ourselves more sacred than this,--to
rescue from our time some portion for the purpose of making ourselves
more worthy of regard.
To undertake to suggest what particular studies you should pursue, in
this larger school to which you are now admitted, would lead me into a
train of remark entirely too extended. One single practical suggestion
may perhaps be pardoned. Do not willingly relinquish the acquisitions
already made. They are to you the true foundations for future
improvement. You have fairly entered upon several important fields in
the domain of science. You are familiar with the elements of Natural
Philosophy, Chemistry, Botany, Physiology, Mental Philosophy, Rhetoric,
and with the foundations of Mathematical Science. My advice is that in
coming years you give to each of these branches, and of whatever else
you have studied here, a stated systematic review. You have some skill
in drawing and painting. Let not so graceful an accomplishment die out
from your fingers. You excel in music. I need not say, if you would
retain this excellence, you must give time to practice and study. So,
whatever talent or attainment you now have, let it be your fixed purpose
not to let it pass from your possession. Keep what you have, whatever
else you may fail to do. To this end, as I said before, give to each of
your school studies an occasional well-considered review. You will then
always have in your mind certain fixed points, to which the
miscellaneous knowledge picked up in your general reading will adhere,
and around which it will accumulate in organized form. New studies, too,
will naturally affiliate with the old, and will be easy and pleasant
just in proportion as you keep the knowledge that you now have, fresh
and bright.
Besides this general advice, there is one accomplishment in particular,
which I would earnestly recommend to you, as I am in the habit of doing
to all of your sex. Cultivate assiduously the ability to read well. I
stop to particularize this, because it is a thing so very much
neglected, and because it is so very elegant, charming, and lady-like an
accomplishment. Where one person is really interested by music, twenty
are pleased with good reading. Where one person is capable of becoming a
skilful musician, twenty may become good readers. Where there is one
occasion suitable for the exercise of musical talent, there are twenty
for that of reading. The culture of the voice necessary for reading
well, gives a delightful charm to the same voice in conversation. Good
reading is the natural exponent and vehicle of all good things. It is
the most effective of all commentaries upon the works of genius. It
seems to bring dead authors to life again, and makes us sit down
familiarly with the great and good of all ages.
Did you ever notice what life and power the Holy Scriptures have, when
well read? Have you ever heard of the wonderful effects produced by
Elizabeth Fry among the hardened criminals of Newgate, by simply reading
to them the parable of the Prodigal Son? Princes and peers of the realm,
it is said, counted it a privilege to stand in those dismal corridors,
among felons and murderers, merely to share with them the privilege of
witnessing the marvellous pathos which genius, taste, and culture could
infuse into that simple story.
What a fascination there is in really good reading! What a power it
gives one! In the hospital, in the chamber of the invalid, in the
nursery, in the domestic and the social circle, among chosen friends and
companions, how it enables you to minister to the amusement, the
comfort, the pleasure of dear ones, as no other art or accomplishment
can. No instrument of man's devising can reach the heart, as does that
most wonderful instrument, the human voice. It is God's special gift and
endowment to his chosen creatures. Fold it not away in a napkin. If you
would double the value of all your other acquisitions; if you would add
immeasurably to your own enjoyment, and to your power of promoting the
enjoyment of others, cultivate with incessant care this Divine gift. No
music below the skies is equal to that of pure, silvery speech from the
lips of a man or woman of high culture.
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