of "all work and no play." Even good, wholesome, congenial work makes us
dull if it is never relieved and brightened by recreation. Many a
faithful worker has broken down under the strain of unremitting toil,
who might have doubled or trebled his years of usefulness if a little
play could have been mingled with the work.
To one who plays all the time, that is, who has no work in life, play
soon becomes stale and wearisome. After the period of childhood is
passed, when play should be the main business of life, it seems to be an
inexorable law of nature that those who will not work shall not play.
Have you ever visited any of the great winter resorts of the South? If
so you have noticed that they are filled largely with people who have no
pursuit in life except that of having a good time. While the world's
work is being done by others, they lead a butterfly existence. What
wonder that they wear a discontented look! Everywhere they seek for
happiness and wonder why they fail to find the elusive creature. It
would not be difficult to tell them. Those who refuse to do the world's
work are denied a share in its play, and thus does Nature assert the
supremacy of her laws.
No people in the world have so good a time when they play as those who
work hard--if they also know how to play well. Self-denial, waiting, and
anticipation give a zest to pleasure that can come in no other way. In
one of Charles Lamb's essays he speaks of the keen delight which he and
his sister took, during the days when toil was unceasing and income
small, on the rare occasions when they could afford to go to the
theater. The poorest seats amply satisfied their desires, and it seemed
to them that no one in the house was so happy as they. "Could those good
old one-shilling gallery days return, could you and I be once more
struggling up those inconvenient staircases, pushed about and squeezed
and elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers, I would be
willing to bury more wealth than Croesus had to purchase it."
The woman who gives herself up wholly to a society life never finds
happiness in that life; but let her make something really worth while
her main object, whether it be bringing up a family, writing books, or
working in a settlement, and her social pleasures will then give her
relaxation and delight. It is the student who works hard and who feels
the glow of accomplishment who can put most zest into a game on the
athletic field.
Our country probably has more workers than any other who do not take
enough time to play. It is so easy for our earnest, energetic people to
fall into this habit. Work is sweet and we think we cannot have too much
of it. Sometimes, too, we get an exaggerated idea of our own importance.
We think that if we stop work for a moment all the wheels of progress
will stand still. Never did any people feel the intensity of life as we
Americans of this generation do. We have heard the gospel of efficiency
preached on every hand, but we have not often been told how to maintain
a high level of efficiency for a long period. Those who are efficient,
and at the same time willing, invariably have more put upon them than
they can do. In addition to legitimate work, there is auxiliary work of
various kinds. Committee meetings and other services for the general
good consume for many of us a great deal of time. So we keep chasing
duties and go to bed every night plagued by the host that we have left
undone.
Yet, shall we regret that we live in an age of opportunity? If we are
counted among the efficient, who are given a large share of work to do,
shall we be sorry? On the contrary, let us remember that more to be
pitied than any one else is the person who, because he has no work in
life, is obliged to hunt for occupation.
The real trouble is that most of us do not know the secret of
economizing our time and strength. Let us ask what the rhythm of life
demands of us. No one is capable of incessant toil without serious
damage. Our highest good demands that there shall be constant
alternation of labor and rest, or work and play. Some forms of work are
play because they involve different powers of mind and body from our
regular work. Many a scholar has studied until his eyes were dimmed and
his mind dulled only to find that he had himself defeated his own
purpose. Many a business man has given himself no rest until increasing
inefficiency compelled it. It is not the teacher who makes a practice of
working late into the night, with never a moment for play, who makes the
inspiring classroom instructor.
Some one has given this recipe for a happy life: "Work, play, study,
laugh; have a job and a hobby." Play should be regarded as a legitimate
part of the business of life. Duty has been only half performed when
happy recreation has been left out.
The wise student has, all through a hard term's work, preserved the
balance between work and play, society and solitude. Unless she has been
particularly unfortunate she has come to the end of the term only
healthily tired. By that I mean the kind of weariness from which
recuperation is rapid and easy. She has not overdrawn her physical bank
account. She has not run in debt to the future. Beware of any weariness
of which that cannot be said.
The daily life of work and play for all of us ought to be so adjusted
that each day's strength is sufficient for each day's needs. Wherever
the conditions of work and play and of health are right, this is true.
But school life, both for teachers and pupils, involves an unusual
amount of wear and tear on the nervous system, and hence we should be
more careful than others, industrial workers, for example, to see that
this strain never becomes unduly severe. Few teachers or students could
stand fifty weeks of school work in a year, an amount which in many
occupations is accepted as a matter of course. That is the reason we
have so many vacations. When vacation comes, then, let us realize its
need, and its purpose; namely, to restore the balance of body and mind
by allowing the beneficent restorative processes of Nature to do their
work upon us; and let us coöperate heartily with these forces. Some do
not do this, but hinder Nature instead of helping her. Some go home for
a three weeks' vacation and spend the entire time in a whirl of social
dissipation. Ask yourself whether that restores your powers so that you
return to your work with mind and body at their best? We rest, not for
the sake of resting, but that we may work better. Vacations are given to
restore the balance of life, not to destroy it.
And some students carry all their school worries and responsibilities
with them into vacation. They dream of their work by night and think of
it by day. They count up all the lessons that must be learned and all
the themes that must be written, as if there would not be a day in which
to do each day's work. "Take no thought [worry] for the things of the
morrow, for the morrow will take thought for the things of itself."
And yet, when the long summer vacation comes, I wonder if even a young
student is justified in using it _all_ for play. We older people, if we
are doing a work in the world which we consider worth while, take an
entire summer for play but rarely. The reason is that life is too short
for all one wants to learn or to accomplish, and so each long vacation
must see the fulfillment of some of the tasks which we have set for
ourselves. For the student there is a middle ground between working at
school tasks all summer and idling during the entire time. Remember that
a change of occupation is one form of rest. If a portion of each
bountiful summer vacation were spent in learning something quite worth
while, yet different from the ordinary school tasks, work and play would
each profit from the other.
Have you sometimes been disturbed because you did not feel just like
beginning hard work at the close of a vacation? Do not let that trouble
you. I have learned to distrust a vacation at the close of which I find
myself wearing the harness too easily. We get the most out of a vacation
by making it as different as possible from our regular work. The more
different it has been, the more difficult it is to get the mind back
into the usual channels.
When the process of "getting up steam" is over, and we settle down to
steady work after a good vacation, the sensation is one of the most
delightful I know. Here is an opportunity to begin life all over again,
and by retrieving the mistakes of the past, to make the future worthier.
As the weeks stretch out ahead of us, they loom up big with opportunity
and privilege. Start home for your next vacation, then, with a
resolution in your heart that you will so spend it that when it is over,
this new outlook upon life and work shall be yours; for the chief
purpose of a vacation is to restore the rhythm of life.
VI
THE USES OF TROUBLE
"Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids not sit nor stand but go!"
You read these familiar words of Browning, but you do not believe them.
There must be trouble in the world, you say. There must be rebuffs and
stings and hardness, and they must be endured; but as to finding good in
such things--why pretend it?
But why talk to young people about trouble? It is well that the mind
should be filled with happiness and hope, yet to ignore the other and
darker side of life does not abolish it. The question of the place of
adversity in life is one that has occupied thinking minds ever since the
world began; and since no one can hope to escape the common lot it is
well to get ready for trouble before it comes. Young people are really
no less interested than their elders in serious subjects. They care for
the deeper things of life and they long to understand them.
One must be very young, indeed, not to have had some hard experience of
one's own, some disappointment or struggle or sorrow. Sometimes these
are troubles that are apparent to all, and our hearts go out in sympathy
and in a yearning desire to comfort. Sometimes they are kept close shut
from others. "The heart knoweth its own bitterness." If you have never
been called to go through deep waters yourself, perhaps you have had to
stand by and suffer in sympathy while some one you loved has done so.
Moreover, youth has its own disappointments, its own griefs and sorrows
to bear, often unguessed by those who are older. Did you believe that
the world was all goodness, and have you suffered the shock that comes
to every sensitive soul upon discovering that it is a very bad as well
as a very good world? How can God be in his heaven and all right with
the world, when there is so much sorrow and suffering and sin? It takes
a long time to think these problems out, and their solution in full
comes only with the "years that bring the philosophic mind." For some it
never comes.
Have you lost faith in some one whom you trusted, and are you therefore
having a struggle lest you lose all faith in human nature? Or do you
distrust yourself and your own powers? While longing with passionate
earnestness to be of use to the world, are you standing on the threshold
of life all uncertain what place there may be for you or whether there
may be any? To all these perplexities often are added religious doubts.
One does not know what one may believe and wonders if one may believe
anything. Many young people, in their process of adjustment to real
life, pass through an experience no less serious than the going down
into the "Everlasting No," described by Carlyle. Many of the interests
and the beliefs of childhood are outgrown, while those of mature manhood
or womanhood have not yet taken their place and the soul seems adrift.
We who are older seldom appreciate either the seriousness or the
sacredness of such experiences in the young. One reason why these are
often so tragic is that youth lacks the perspective for judging them.
There are as yet no long memories. One believes that what is now will
always be. There is no remembrance of the conquest of past difficulties
by which to judge the present.
So much to show that life is not all sunshine even when we are twenty!
But these experiences, tragic as they seem at the time, will, if nobly
lived through, bring their own compensation in truer self-knowledge and
greater depth and earnestness of character. We learn from them, too, the
necessity for readjustment. We learn to adapt ourselves to the real
world in which we find ourselves instead of to the unreal world of our
dreams.
"I slept and dreamed that life was beauty;
I woke and found that life was duty."
This process of readjustment involves the reconciling of the two, the
discovery that the life of duty to which we wake is at the same time the
life of beauty of which we dreamed.
In this process of readjustment, the first thing to learn is that it is
not necessary that we should have everything we want. Indeed, it is not
necessary that we should be happy. As soon as we recognize that fact we
are on the way to happiness. How many spoiled children of indulgent
parents there are who do not learn this except through some unhappy
experience! How many such have I watched with interest and sympathy when
the idea first dawned upon their minds that, perhaps, after all, life
was not going to bring them everything they demanded! Their pitifully
narrow and selfish ideas must be uprooted and broad and generous ideas
must take their place before even a beginning will have been made toward
a fruitful life. In a world where none of us can have just what we want,
where no life is ever carried out exactly as planned, and where any day
may rob us of what we have cherished most, it behooves us to form early
in life the habit of making the most of whatever comes our way. Of
nothing is this more true than of those things we do not welcome, that
seem hard and forbidding. Usually they are not what they seem, but are
friends in disguise, as Browning tells us.
There are many kinds of trouble, and, of course, some kinds are harder
to bear than others. Hardships and rebuffs might rank as the easiest.
Loss of money or material possessions is not as serious as at first it
seems. Grief is much more difficult to bear. Yet of whatever kind or
degree the adversities of life, it is probable that each, as Shakespeare
puts it, wears a precious jewel in its head.
There are several ways of meeting trouble. One wrong way is to regard it
in a spirit of rebellion, and by constant brooding over what might have
been, to allow it to embitter and spoil life. We have all known people
who went through life meeting trouble in this way.
Another and a better way to meet trouble is with stoical resignation.
This does undoubtedly bring strength, but it does not bring sweetness.
One has not really gained the victory unless he goes further.
There is something better than to quarrel with trouble and there is
something better than merely to endure it, and that is to compel it,
before we are through with it, to do us good, even as Jacob wrested a
blessing from the angel. It is natural to think that our troubles only
restrict and limit; but we may find even in the most overwhelming
disaster that which enriches life. That is the reason it so often
happens that one who has known the depths of sorrow is a tower of
strength upon whom others may lean, or a well of comfort and inspiration
from which they may draw. Nothing has yet been discovered so good for
the development of character as struggle. Deep human sympathy and the
power to enter into the sorrows of others are born of suffering.
Have you not known some wealthy family whose riches suddenly took wings,
to the enormous gain of every one of its members? Sons, whose lives of
luxurious ease were rapidly hurrying them along the road to ruin are now
forced to become self-supporting and thus acquire those manly virtues
which before had been wanting. Daughters, obliged to shoulder some of
the responsibilities of life and plan for others instead of for their
own selfish pleasure, are made strong and womanly.
To be stricken by an incurable disease would seem to be the worst
misfortune that could befall any human being. Yet, if so, why is it that
invalids are so often the sunniest, most serene, most stimulating
persons we know? I have chanced to be acquainted with several such in my
life to whom I would go if in need of a word of encouragement or
inspiration. All the disappointment in the failure of life's plans, all
the suffering and pain have been transmuted into character. If, after
all, the chief purpose of life is the making of character, we need not
be so concerned over the means. It is for us to take the material
provided, and with the means given to accomplish a worthy result. "Life
is the raw material," says Goethe, "and man the artist who is to shape
it into a thing of beauty."
I know a lady who lost in quick succession all her children. She might
have become hard and bitter, crying out against the injustice that took
her children while other happy mothers are surrounded by their little
ones. Instead she became an angel of mercy to all the needy children
within her reach. By her efficient work for pure-milk laws, better
sanitary conditions, vacation playgrounds, and free kindergartens, she
doubtless prevented many other mothers from having to mourn as she
mourned. She is gentler, kindlier, more loving, more unselfish than
before her great sorrow came to her, and her life is probably of much
more value to the world than it would have been otherwise. She
transmuted her sorrow into unselfish service. "When He hath tried me I
shall come forth as gold."
Why trouble comes to us and why it comes in the forms it does, he must
be a very wise person who presumes to say. One of the world-poets of old
wrote a great poem upon the problem of suffering. Yet Job did not find
out why God sent trouble to him, though he learned that it was not sent
as a punishment. He also learned what his attitude should be toward it
and in what spirit he should bear it. And for us, too, it is far more
important that we should meet trouble in the right way than that we
should know why it comes. Are you carrying some burden or bearing some
cross that often seems too heavy? And do you sometimes feel rebellious
about it and contrast your lot with that of some one who has no such
cross to bear? That is unworthy of your best self, as you well know. It
is for you to see to it that this trouble, whatever it may be, not only
does not spoil your character and your life, but that it enriches both.
It is, perhaps, the best means you will ever have to acquire certain
qualities which you need and which, perhaps, you greatly admire in
others. By this trial you are being tested. By the way you endure it
will all your future life be determined. It is your part to become, not
in spite of this burden, but because of it, a larger person than you
were before.
An insight into some of the immutable laws of life helps us to endure
hard things. No law is probably more steadfast than the law of
compensation, as Emerson clearly shows us in his remarkable essay on
that subject, an essay which should be read by every young person who is
trying to formulate a philosophy of life. "For everything you miss you
gain something else, and for everything you gain you lose something."
When you are obliged to give up some cherished project or dear ambition,
try to discover what you received in its place.
Perhaps you long to be a musician, an artist, or a scholar, and perhaps
certain duties and obligations life has created for you prevent the
fulfillment of this cherished dream. Then find your self-realization in
those things which are permitted you. "What we need is not so much to
realize the ideal as to idealize the real." Nothing so rapidly develops
character in a young person as the shouldering of responsibility. While
one of your friends may have been perfecting herself in music or art, or
broadening herself by foreign travel, you have been carrying heavy
burdens for others. Has it, therefore, been all loss to you and all gain
to her? Far from it. Instead, she has gained one thing, you another.
Most of us do not receive more than our share in life. You will be
surprised if you look about you to discover how true this is. Apply the
test to your friends and acquaintances one by one, and you will see that
the advantages of each are more or less counterbalanced by the
disadvantages, so that things are by no means so unjustly arranged as it
would at first seem.
Another thought that may help us to adjust ourselves to the hard things
in our lives is that it takes some losses, some disappointments and
sorrows to make us appreciate the good things that we have. Youth is
wasteful, not realizing its riches. It always remains true that what we
do not realize does not exist, for us. A part of the law of compensation
is that the more we lose, the more highly we prize what is left. That,
perhaps, is the greatest compensation for growing older. Though the
relentless years have taken away much to which we clung with tenacity,
yet, somehow, we have come to place so high a valuation upon what
remains that we often grow happier in spite of persistent and increasing
losses. In the old story of the Sibylline Books, there is a thought of
very wide application.
How little do we know which paths lead to happiness and success! We are
sure, however, that we do know and rebel at the least deviation from the
road we had marked out. Yet again and again a Power wiser than ourselves
changes the direction of the path, and compels us to travel a different
and unwelcome way. Afterward, looking back, we often realize that the
best things life has brought us have come along that road of the defeat
of cherished plans. These words of Emerson should be taken to heart by
every young person who is having a severe struggle or who is passing
through fiery trials:--
"We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not
know that they only go out, that archangels may come in. A fever, a
mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends,
seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years
reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a
dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation,
somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly
operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy
or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted
occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation
of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or
constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the reception of new
influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the
man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room
for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the
walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banyan of the forest,
yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men."
VII
SCHOOL SPIRIT
Among the forces which shape young men and women in our educational
institutions, none is more potent than that indefinable, intangible,
powerful thing we call school spirit, or college spirit, as the case may
be. Students are often mistaken in the expression of it, but the spirit
is right, though the expression may be wrong. School spirit always
represents an unselfish attitude of the student. He has heard the call
of something larger than himself.
Though school spirit may be only a sentiment, it is that which gives its
deepest richness to the life of a good school. It belongs to an epoch in
the life of the student that can never be repeated and never forgotten.
It is the source, not only of much of the truest happiness of the
precious school days, but of stimulus to high endeavor.
While there are many day schools that have a fine and strong school
spirit, it reaches its height only in those schools and colleges where
the students live a common corporate life, away from their homes and
other influences which tend to separate them instead of unite them. Such
communities foster the closeness and intimacy necessary to that complete
solidarity essential for strong school spirit.