held unconsciously, come from the books they read; but to the majority
they are given by the persons whom they most admire before they are
twenty years old. The greatest thing any friend or teacher, either in
school or college, can do for a student is to furnish him with a
personal ideal. The college professors who transformed me through my
acquaintance with them--ah, they were few, and I am sure I did not have
a dozen conversations with them outside their classrooms--gave me, each
in his different way, an ideal of character, of conduct, of the scholar,
the leader, of which they and I were totally unconscious at the time.
For many years I have known that my study with them, no matter whether
of philosophy or of Greek, of mathematics or history or English,
enlarged my notions of life, uplifted my standards of culture, and so
inspired me with new possibilities of usefulness and of happiness. Not
the facts and theories that I learned so much as the men who taught me,
gave this inspiration. The community at large is right in saying that it
wants the personal influence of professors on students, but it is wholly
wrong in assuming that this precious influence comes from frequent
meetings or talks on miscellaneous subjects. There is quite as likely to
be a quickening force in the somewhat remote and mysterious power of the
teacher who devotes himself to amassing treasures of scholarship, or to
patiently working out the best methods of teaching; who standing
somewhat apart, still remains an ideal of the Christian scholar, the
just, the courteous man or woman. To come under the influence of one
such teacher is enough to make college life worth while. A young man who
came to Harvard with eighty cents in his pocket, and worked his way
through, never a high scholar, and now in a business which looks very
commonplace, told me the other day that he would not care to be alive if
he had not gone to college. His face flushed as he explained how
different his days would have been if he had not known two of his
professors. "Do you use your college studies in your business?" I
asked. "Oh, no!" he answered. "But I am another man in doing the
business; and when the day's work is done I live another life because of
my college experiences. The business and I are both the better for it
every day." How many a young girl has had her whole horizon extended by
the changed ideals she gained in college! Yet this is largely because
the associations and studies there are likely to give her permanent
interests--the fifth and perhaps the greatest gift of college life of
which I shall speak.
The old fairy story which charmed us in childhood ended with "And they
were married and lived happy ever after." It conducted to the altar,
having brought the happy pair through innumerable difficulties, and left
us with the contented sense that all the mistakes and problems would now
vanish and life be one long day of unclouded bliss. I have seen devoted
and intelligent mothers arrange their young daughters' education and
companionships precisely on this basis. They planned as if these pretty
and charming girls were going to live only twenty or twenty-five years
at the utmost, and had consequently no need of the wealthy interests
that should round out the fullgrown woman's stature, making her younger
in feeling at forty than at twenty, and more lovely and admired at
eighty than at either.
Emerson in writing of beauty declares that "the secret of ugliness
consists not in irregular outline, but in being uninteresting. We love
any forms, however ugly, from which great qualities shine. If command,
eloquence, art, or invention exists in the most deformed person, all
the accidents that usually displease, please, and raise esteem and
wonder higher. Beauty without grace is the head without the body.
Beauty without expression tires." Of course such considerations can
hardly come with full force to the young girl herself, who feels aged
at eighteen, and imagines that the troubles and problems of life and
thought are hers already. "Oh, tell me to-night," cried a college
freshman once to her president, "which is the right side and which is
the wrong side of this Andover question about eschatology?" The
young girl is impatient of open questions, and irritated at her
inability to answer them. Neither can she believe that the first
headlong zest with which she throws herself into society, athletics,
into everything which comes in her way, can ever fail. But her elders
know, looking on, that our American girl, the comrade of her parents
and of her brothers and their friends, brought up from babyhood in the
eager talk of politics and society, of religious belief, of public
action, of social responsibility--that this typical girl, with her
quick sympathies, her clear head, her warm heart, her outreaching
hands, will not permanently be satisfied or self-respecting, though she
have the prettiest dresses and hats in town, or the most charming of
dinners, dances, and teas. Unless there comes to her, and comes early,
the one chief happiness of life,--a marriage of comradeship,--she must
face for herself the question, "What shall I do with my life?"
I recall a superb girl of twenty as I overtook her one winter morning
hurrying along Commonwealth Avenue. She spoke of a brilliant party at a
friend's the previous evening. "But, oh!" she cried, throwing up her
hands in a kind of hopeless impatience, "tell me what to do. My dancing
days are over!" I laughed at her, "Have you sprained your ankle?" But I
saw I had made a mistake when she added, "It is no laughing matter. I
have been out three years. I have not done what they expected of me,"
with a flush and a shrug, "and there is a crowd of nice girls coming on
this winter; and anyway, I am so tired of going to teas and ball-games
and assemblies! I don't care the least in the world for foreign
missions, and," with a stamp, "I am not going slumming among the
Italians. I have too much respect for the Italians. And what shall I do
with the rest of my life?" That was a frank statement of what any girl
of brains or conscience feels, with more or less bitter distinctness,
unless she marries early, or has some pressing work for which she is
well trained.
Yet even if that which is the profession of woman _par excellence_ be
hers, how can she be perennially so interesting a companion to her
husband and children as if she had keen personal tastes, long her own,
and growing with her growth? Indeed, in that respect the condition of
men is almost the same as that of women. It would be quite the same were
it not for the fact that a man's business or profession is generally in
itself a means of growth, of education, of dignity. He leans his life
against it. He builds his home in the shadow of it. It binds his days
together in a kind of natural piety, and makes him advance in strength
and nobility as he "fulfils the common round, the daily task." And that
is the reason why men in the past, if they have been honorable men, have
grown old better than women. Men usually retain their ability longer,
their mental alertness and hospitality. They add fine quality to fine
quality, passing from strength to strength and preserving in old age
whatever has been best in youth. It was a sudden recognition of this
fact which made a young friend of mine say last winter, "I am not going
to parties any more; the men best worth talking with are too old to
dance."
Even with the help of a permanent business or profession, however, the
most interesting men I know are those who have an avocation as well as a
vocation. I mean a taste or work quite apart from the business of life.
This revives, inspires, and cultivates them perpetually. It matters
little what it is, if only it is real and personal, is large enough to
last, and possesses the power of growth. A young sea-captain from a New
England village on a long and lonely voyage falls upon a copy of
Shelley. Appeal is made to his fine but untrained mind, and the book of
the boy poet becomes the seaman's university. The wide world of poetry
and of the other fine arts is opened, and the Shelleyian specialist
becomes a cultivated, original, and charming man. A busy merchant loves
flowers, and in all his free hours studies them. Each new spring adds
knowledge to his knowledge, and his friends continually bring him their
strange discoveries. With growing wealth he cultivates rare and
beautiful plants, and shares them with his fortunate acquaintances.
Happy the companion invited to a walk or a drive with such observant
eyes, such vivid talk! Because of this cheerful interest in flowers, and
this ingenious skill in dealing with them, the man himself is
interesting. All his powers are alert, and his judgment is valued in
public life and in private business. Or is it more exact to say that
because he is the kind of man who would insist upon having such
interests outside his daily work, he is still fresh and young and
capable of growth at an age when many other men are dull and old and
certain that the time of decay is at hand?
There are two reasons why women need to cultivate these large and
abiding interests even more persistently than men. In the first place,
they have more leisure. They are indeed the only leisured class in the
country, the only large body of persons who are not called upon to win
their daily bread in direct, wage-earning ways. As yet, fortunately, few
men among us have so little self-respect as to idle about our streets
and drawing-rooms because their fathers are rich enough to support them.
We are not without our unemployed poor; but roving tramps and idle
clubmen are after all not of large consequence. Our serious
non-producing classes are chiefly women. It is the regular ambition of
the chivalrous American to make all the women who depend on him so
comfortable that they need do nothing for themselves. Machinery has
taken nearly all the former occupations of women out of the home into
the shop and factory. Widespread wealth and comfort, and the inherited
theory that it is not well for the woman to earn money so long as father
or brothers can support her, have brought about a condition of things in
which there is social danger, unless with the larger leisure are given
high and enduring interests. To health especially there is great danger,
for nothing breaks down a woman's health like idleness and its resulting
ennui. More people, I am sure, are broken down nervously because they
are bored, than because they are overworked; and more still go to
pieces through fussiness, unwholesome living, worry over petty details,
and the daily disappointments which result from small and superficial
training. And then, besides the danger to health, there is the danger to
character. I need not dwell on the undermining influence which men also
feel when occupation is taken away and no absorbing private interest
fills the vacancy. The vices of luxurious city life are perhaps hardly
more destructive to character than is the slow deterioration of barren
country life. Though the conditions in the two cases are exactly
opposite, the trouble is often the same,--absence of noble interests. In
the city restless idleness organizes amusement; in the country deadly
dulness succeeds daily toil.
But there is a second reason why a girl should acquire for herself
strong and worthy interests. The regular occupations of women in their
homes are generally disconnected and of little educational value, at
least as those homes are at present conducted. Given the best will in
the world, the daily doing of household details becomes a wearisome
monotony if the mere performance of them is all. To make drudgery divine
a woman must have a brain to plan and eyes to see how to "sweep a room
as to God's laws." Imagination and knowledge should be the hourly
companions of her who would make a fine art of each detail in kitchen
and nursery. Too long has the pin been the appropriate symbol of the
average woman's life--the pin, which only temporarily holds together
things which may or may not have any organic connection with one
another. While undoubtedly most women must spend the larger part of life
in this modest pin-work, holding together the little things of home and
school and society and church, it is also true, that cohesive work
itself cannot be done well, even in humble circumstances, except by the
refined, the trained, the growing woman. The smallest village, the
plainest home, give ample space for the resources of the trained college
woman. And the reason why such homes and such villages are so often
barren of grace and variety is just because these fine qualities have
not ruled them. The higher graces of civilization halt among us; dainty
and finished ways of living give place to common ways, while vulgar
tastes, slatternly habits, clouds and despondency reign in the house.
Little children under five years of age die in needless thousands
because of the dull, unimaginative women on whom they depend. Such women
have been satisfied with just getting along, instead of packing
everything they do with brains, instead of studying the best possible
way of doing everything small or large; for there is always a best way,
whether of setting a table, of trimming a hat, or teaching a child to
read. And this taste for perfection can be cultivated; indeed, it must
be cultivated, if our standards of living are to be raised. There is now
scientific knowledge enough, there is money enough, to prevent the vast
majority of the evils which afflict our social organism, if mere
knowledge or wealth could avail; but the greater difficulty is to make
intelligence, character, good taste, unselfishness prevail.
What, then, are the interests which powerfully appeal to mind and heart,
and so are fitted to become the strengthening companions of a woman's
life? I shall mention only three, all of them such as are elaborately
fostered by college life. The first is the love of great literature. I
do not mean that use of books by which a man may get what is called a
good education and so be better qualified for the battle of life, nor do
I mention books in their character as reservoirs of knowledge, books
which we need for special purposes, and which are no longer of
consequence when our purpose with them is served. I have in mind the
great books, especially the great poets, books to be adopted as a
resource and a solace. The chief reason why so many people do not know
how to make comrades of such books is because they have come to them too
late. We have in this country enormous numbers of readers,--probably a
larger number who read, and who read many hours in the week, than has
ever been known elsewhere in the world. But what do these millions read
besides the newspapers? Possibly a denominational religious weekly and
another journal of fashion or business. Then come the thousands who read
the best magazines, and whatever else is for the moment popular in
novels and poetry--the last dialect story, the fashionable poem, the
questionable but talked-of novel. Let a violent attack be made on the
decency of a new story, and instantly, if only it is clever, its author
becomes famous.
But the fashions in reading of a restless race--the women too idle, the
men too heavily worked--I will not discuss here. Let light literature be
devoured by our populace as his drug is taken by the opium-eater, and
with a similar narcotic effect. We can only seek out the children, and
hope by giving them from babyhood bits of the noblest literature, to
prepare them for the great opportunities of mature life. I urge,
therefore, reading as a mental stimulus, as a solace in trouble, a
perpetual source of delight; and I would point out that we must not
delay to make the great friendships that await us on the library shelves
until sickness shuts the door on the outer world, or death enters the
home and silences the voices that once helped to make these friendships
sweet. If Homer and Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Browning are to have
meaning for us when we need them most, it will be because they come to
us as old familiar friends whose influences have permeated the glad and
busy days before. The last time I heard James Russell Lowell talk to
college girls, he said,--for he was too ill to say many words,--"I have
only this one message to leave with you. In all your work in college
never lose sight of the reason why you have come here. It is not that
you may get something by which to earn your bread, but that every
mouthful of bread may be the sweeter to your taste."
And this is the power possessed by the mighty dead,--men of every time
and nation, whose voices death cannot silence, who are waiting even at
the poor man's elbow, whose illuminating words may be had for the price
of a day's work in the kitchen or the street, for lack of love of whom
many a luxurious home is a dull and solitary spot, breeding misery and
vice. Now the modern college is especially equipped to introduce its
students to such literature. The library is at last understood to be the
heart of the college. The modern librarian is not the keeper of books as
was his predecessor, but the distributer of them, and the guide to their
resources, proud when he increases the use of his treasures. Every
language, ancient or modern, which contains a literature is now taught
in college. Its history is examined, its philology, its masterpieces,
and more than ever is English literature studied and loved. There is now
every opportunity for the college student to become an expert in the
use of his own tongue and pen. What other men painfully strive for he
can enjoy to the full with comparatively little effort.
But there is a second invigorating interest to which college training
introduces its student. I mean the study of nature, intimacy with the
strange and beautiful world in which we live. "Nature never did betray
the heart that loved her," sang her poet and high priest. When the world
has been too much with us, nothing else is so refreshing to tired eyes
and mind as woods and water, and an intelligent knowledge of the life
within them. For a generation past there has been a well-nigh universal
turning of the population toward the cities. In 1840 only nine per cent
of our people lived in cities of eight thousand inhabitants or more. Now
more than a third of us are found in cities. But the electric car, the
telephone, the bicycle, still keep avenues to the country open. Certain
it is that city people feel a growing hunger for the country,
particularly when grass begins to grow. This is a healthy taste, and
must increase the general knowledge and love of nature. Fortunate are
the little children in those schools whose teachers know and love the
world in which they live. Their young eyes are early opened to the
beauty of birds and trees and plants. Not only should we expect our
girls to have a feeling for the fine sunset or the wide-reaching
panorama of field and water, but to know something also about the less
obvious aspects of nature, its structure, its methods of work, and the
endless diversity of its parts. No one can have read Matthew Arnold's
letters to his wife, his mother, and his sister, without being struck by
the immense enjoyment he took throughout his singularly simple and
hard-working life in flowers and trees and rivers. The English lake
country had given him this happy inheritance, with everywhere its sound
of running water and its wealth of greenery. There is a close connection
between the marvellous unbroken line of English song and the passionate
love of the Englishman for a home in the midst of birds, trees, and
green fields.
The world is so full of a number of things,
That I think we should all be as happy as kings,
is the opinion of everybody who knows nature as did Robert Louis
Stevenson. And so our college student may begin to know it. Let her
enter the laboratories and investigate for herself. Let her make her
delicate experiments with the blowpipe or the balance; let her track
mysterious life from one hiding-place to another; let her "name all the
birds without a gun," and make intimates of flower and fish and
butterfly--and she is dull indeed if breezy tastes do not follow her
through life, and forbid any of her days to be empty of intelligent
enjoyment. "Keep your years beautiful; make your own atmosphere,"
was the parting advice of my college president, himself a living
illustration of what he said.
But it is a short step from the love of the complex and engaging world
in which we live to the love of our comrades in it. Accordingly the
third precious interest to be cultivated by the college student is an
interest in people. The scholar to-day is not a being who dwells apart
in his cloister, the monk's successor; he is a leader of the thoughts
and conduct of men. So the new subjects which stand beside the classics
and mathematics of mediaeval culture are history, economics, ethics, and
sociology. Although these subjects are as yet merely in the making,
thousands of students are flocking to their investigation, and are going
out to try their tentative knowledge in College Settlements and City
Missions and Children's Aid Societies. The best instincts of generous
youth are becoming enlisted in these living themes. And why should our
daughters remain aloof from the most absorbing work of modern city life,
work quite as fascinating to young women as to young men? During many
years of listening to college sermons and public lectures in Wellesley,
I always noticed a quickened attention in the audience whenever the
discussion touched politics or theology. These are, after all, the
permanent and peremptory interests, and they should be given their full
place in a healthy and vigorous life.
But if that life includes a love of books, of nature, of people, it will
naturally turn to enlarged conceptions of religion--my sixth and last
gift of college life. In his first sermon as Master of Balliol College,
Dr. Jowett spoke of the college, "First as a place of education,
secondly as a place of society, thirdly as a place of religion." He
observed that "men of very great ability often fail in life because they
are unable to play their part with effect. They are shy, awkward,
self-conscious, deficient in manners, faults which are as ruinous as
vices." The supreme end of college training, he said, "is usefulness in
after life." Similarly, when the city of Cambridge celebrated in
Harvard's Memorial Hall the life and death of the gallant young
ex-Governor of Massachusetts, William E. Russell, men did well to hang
above his portrait some wise words he had lately said, "Never forget the
everlasting difference between making a living and making a life." That
he himself never forgot; and it was well to remind citizens and students
of it, as they stood there facing too the ancient words all Harvard men
face when they take their college degrees and go out into the world,
"They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and
they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever."
Good words these to go out from college with. The girls of Wellesley
gather every morning at chapel to bow their heads together for a moment
before they scatter among the libraries and lecture rooms and begin the
experiments of the new day. And always their college motto meets the
eyes that are raised to its penetrating message, "Not to be ministered
unto, but to minister." How many a young heart has loyally responded,
"And to give life a ransom for many." That is the "Wellesley spirit";
and the same sweet spirit of devout service has gone forth from all our
college halls. In any of them one may catch the echo of Whittier's noble
psalm,--
Our Lord and Master of us all!
Whate'er our name or sign,
We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call,
We test our lives by Thine.
That is the supreme test of life,--its consecrated serviceableness. The
Master of Balliol was right; the brave men and women who founded our
schools and colleges were not wrong. "For Christ and the Church"
universities were set up in the wilderness of New England; for the large
service of the state they have been founded and maintained at public
cost in every section of the country where men have settled, from the
Alleghanies across the prairies and Rocky Mountains down to the Golden
Gate. Founded primarily as seats of learning, their teachers have been
not only scientists and linguists, philosophers and historians, but men
and women of holy purposes, sound patriotism, courageous convictions,
refined and noble tastes. Set as these teachers have been upon a hill,
their light has at no period of our country's history been hid. They
have formed a large factor in our civilization, and in their own
beautiful characters have continually shown us how to combine religion
and life, the ideal and practical, the human and the divine.