in that while some can be taken away from us, others cannot. It is
difficult to conceive of any place or time or circumstances under which
we could be deprived of the privilege of loving and serving. Our feeling
of obligation and responsibility for others is one that should deepen
with years, and from this source we should learn to derive more and more
of our happiness. This kind of happiness is very far removed from what
we ordinarily think of as pleasure; indeed, it often involves suffering.
"We can only have the highest happiness--such as goes along with being a
great man--by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the
world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so
much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being what
we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is
good."
This was the happiness of Lincoln, carrying the burdens of his unhappy
country on his suffering heart; it was the happiness of the noble army
of martyrs of every age; it was the happiness of Christ. He taught us to
call it blessedness. As you carefully study His life and character, you
will see that He was acquainted with all three kinds of happiness. He
despised not pleasure. He was no ascetic, but came eating and drinking.
Great must have been the enjoyment in nature of one who could speak as
He spake of the lily of the field that outshone the splendor of Solomon,
of the humble sparrow unloved of men, but cared for by the good
All-Father, of the green blade bursting through the dark soil, of the
fields yellowing for the harvest. He enjoyed mingling with His fellow
men and knew the joys of friendship. The work which He had been given to
do absorbed Him and filled Him with constant joy. If He had not been
happy He could not have drawn others to Him as He did, and above all,
little children would not have come unto Him. If we sometimes have a
different idea of Him, it is because of the closing scenes of His life,
after He became a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
Yet it was blessedness that Christ knew best of all. The deeper joys
were His; the joy of self-forgetfulness and of self-sacrifice, and the
joy of knowing that He was in perfect harmony with His Father's will.
Yet who shall say that He was not happy? Would He have exchanged His
life of toil and hardship and suffering for any other lot? We know that
He never sought another. His secret lies open to the world, for He spoke
of it over and over again.
Life does not treat us all alike in the matter of pleasure, and if that
were the end and aim of existence this would seem to be a very unjust
world. Life does not treat us with entire impartiality even in the
matter of happiness. Though most of us are given sufficient material to
make life rich and full if we will, yet there are lives that seem to be
an exception to this rule. But life treats us all alike in that if
pleasure is denied us and we have scant material out of which to build
happiness, we may at least attain to blessedness. We may have the joy of
self-sacrifice, the privilege of living for others, the glad
consciousness of duty nobly done, the power of spiritual growth, the
blessedness of knowing that our will is in harmony with God's will.
These things the world does not give and it cannot take away.
XIV
AFTER GRADUATION
"There is a past which is gone forever, but there is a future which is
still our own." Never before or after is one likely to have such mingled
feelings of regret for the vanished past and eagerness for the
approaching future as at the close of the school life. Sometimes it is
difficult to decide whether the note of sadness or of joy is the
dominant one.
As the school days are seen to be rapidly slipping away, the student
recognizes, perhaps for the first time, something of their real worth.
They have not been wholly free from troubles and disappointments, though
some time, by contrast, it will seem that they have been so. Even now,
however, you know them to have been days of happy freedom, of glad
fellowship, of joyous achievement. Your chief regret in the future will
be that you did not quite understand how perfect they were. Now you
begin to see what older people mean when they talk of "halcyon days."
Not that they were the best days your life will know,--let no one
persuade you to that,--but they have a quality all their own that can
belong to no other period of life. They will loom larger and larger as
they recede into the past, for you will realize more and more fully how
much was then begun in you which will go on as long as your soul shall
endure.
There are few who can approach the end of school or college life without
being made a little serious by the thought that they are moving on. "So
our lives glide on," says George Eliot; "the river ends, we don't know
where, the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore."
Perhaps it has come to you with overwhelming suddenness that the days of
preparation for life are over and that the life for which you have been
preparing is at hand. You seem always to have been in a safe and
sheltered harbor. Now you must push out into the great stream of life,
must become your own pilot, must henceforth be responsible for the
conduct of the voyage. Are you wise enough for such an undertaking? Who
is? Yet an all-wise Creator has ordained that this way lies the only
possibility of growth. Responsibility is thrust upon us and we grow able
to carry responsibility.
"When Duty whispers, lo! thou must.
The youth replies, I can."
The realization of all these sober facts, coming home to the young heart
with sudden force, often begets a mood of seriousness and of peculiar
responsiveness. It may be that one has not always listened very
attentively even to words spoken in deepest earnestness. Life is so full
of absorbing interests that it is easy to hear yet hear not. We
sometimes forget what an enormous amount of good advice is given to
young people and how difficult it would be to follow all of it. Yet I
have seldom known a student in whom the combined circumstances of
graduation--those to which I have referred and many more--did not
produce an earnest and responsive mood, a mood which welcomed sincere
and kindly advice. At such a time words of counsel are likely to sink
into the heart as seeds into the upturned earth after a rain. Is it for
this reason that we call in the wisest and most inspiring speaker we can
find to say the very last words to those whom we send forth, conscious,
as we always must be, how far short our best efforts have fallen of our
high intentions?
There is in the heart of every young person who has any serious thoughts
a desire that life may be lived worthily. Who can look forward with any
satisfaction to being a drone in the world's busy hive? Who can be
content to count only as a cipher? "Each of us," says one of our
ex-Presidents, "unless he is contented to be a slumberer on the earth's
surface, must do his life-work with his whole heart." Does not this
strike a responsive chord in each one of us?
There is a phrase current in these days which began as slang, but which
found so useful a place it is not likely to disappear. It is the phrase,
"make good." It is oftenest heard in connection with young people after
they have left school or college for active life. Their anxious friends
inquire, "Will he make good?" "Is she making good?" Unless I am mistaken
there is more or less turmoil and anxiety in the minds of most young
people--an anxiety seldom admitted to others and not always to
themselves, lest they may not "make good." The greater one's longing to
be of use, the greater, perhaps, the fear of inability to live up to
one's high obligations. How can one be sure of finding the opportunity
to render the service one is eager to render? All departments of service
seem already crowded; can it be that the world needs more workers? One
must be peculiarly endowed with self-confidence who feels no misgivings
on this score. Yet timidity never accomplished anything, and belief that
we shall succeed is the first essential of success. Though the world
presents an apparently solid front to the would-be worker, it is
astonishing how quickly it makes a place for one who shows the qualities
of perseverance and pluck. There is work for every one who is earnest
and willing. Put out of your mind, then, every thought of failure, have
faith in yourself and your own powers, and believe that your part in
life will be a worthy one.
We must remember, in the first place, that what we are at any given time
is only the beginning of our real selves, that is, of our realized
selves. The self you seem to be is not you any more than yourself of
five years ago was really you. We are constantly changing, never
completed. Little do you know the power that may develop within you. To
begin somewhere, somehow, doing what your hand or your brain finds to do
and doing it enthusiastically and well, is a sure guaranty of that
growth which begets larger opportunity.
To discover that opportunity, however, that vantage-point which
determines future growth, is, in the case of many young women, not so
easy as it seems. Few who are not brought close to the problems of large
numbers of young women realize how much more difficult it is for them
than it is for their brothers to find, immediately after graduation,
conditions which are conducive to earnest, purposeful, and growing
lives. Contrast a graduating class of young women with a similar class
of young men. Look forward into the next few years and note the
differences that are likely to exist in the conditions and circumstances
of their lives. In the majority of cases the young man has already
chosen his life-work and he hastens eagerly to it. Every stimulus to
endeavor is furnished him. The world expects him to give up all else, if
necessary, for that chosen work, and it is demanded of him that he
succeed. He knows the rich rewards which come to the man who reaches the
top of his profession or business. He may go to any part of the earth
that will best suit his own purpose. Though he be an only son, or even
an only child, he goes, and the world does not disapprove. To give up a
promising career that loved ones might not be left lonely would seem, to
say the least, quixotic. Has not the young man his own destiny to carve
out?
All this is probably right. I am not finding fault with the world's
attitude toward its young men. I am not intimating that there is no
difference between men and women, or that it is right or desirable that
the average young woman should aspire to a "career." I should like,
however, to point out some of the obstacles that often lie in the way of
her growth. How frequent are the comments upon the apparently aimless
and purposeless life of some young woman who once was eager for growth
and useful activity! I want to inquire what the world has done to make
her life purposeful. Indeed, the probability is that if she has desired
to engage in some definite work that she loved and believed worth while,
a chorus of voices has gone up in protest.
Not all girls meet the same problems after graduation. In this respect
there are to my mind three distinct classes. First, there is the girl
who is well satisfied to settle down at home and to whom after a brief
period there comes an early and a happy marriage. So far as we are
concerned here, her problems are settled, and settled in an eminently
satisfactory way. To such a girl one only wants to give the warning that
to ensconce one's self snugly in a happy home with one's loved ones and
forget the rest of the world is ignoble. There are too many bad homes in
the world that need your touch, there are too many homeless people who
need your hospitality. While the first and best service you can render
is to create an ideal home, yet that home should be shared. One thing
which all of us, from the greatest to the least, can do is to work for
the betterment of the community in which we live. So long as there are
bad laws or unenforced good laws, harmful sanitary conditions, wrong
social influences, we should prove our good citizenship by making
sacrifices for the public welfare. The woman without a business or
profession is in a peculiarly advantageous position for giving the
service those with less time at their disposal cannot render.
The second class of girls I have in mind consists of those who do not
wish or need to settle down at home with little or nothing to do, but
who crave a larger activity. I am not speaking of those who are
genuinely needed at home. No girl with right instincts can be so
cowardly as to desert in their need--and for her own happiness or
supposed welfare--those to whom she owes most. Yet the need for her
often seems to exist when it really does not. There is no family that
would not be the happier for the presence of an affectionate and helpful
daughter in the home. Increase in the family happiness alone, however,
is not a sufficient excuse for stifling the desires of an eager and
aspiring daughter. The family should make sure that her highest welfare,
as well as their own, is being guarded. When the parents decided to give
that daughter an education, they took an irrevocable step. Is it strange
that now, with all her mental faculties developed and her heart awakened
to the needs of humanity, those things which once filled her life can do
so no longer? Parents who do not want to see in their daughter the
development of new interests and new longings should not educate her.
How often have I heard the plea that the daughter was needed in the home
when to the outward observer this need was much less than the daughter's
need of opportunity! Those who take it upon themselves to deprive a
young woman of that form of growth, or of service which she most
desires, should not be forgetful of her future. How many women have I
seen who had given up exclusively to their parents the best years of
their youth, letting the time slip by when they might have acquired
proficiency in some special and satisfying work! Death finally stepped
in and removed the objects of their love and the center of their
life-interest, leaving them alone, with empty hearts and lives. Look
about you and see how many women you can count up who belong to this
class. I have often asked myself in such a case what it was the family
received from this woman to justify the enormous sacrifice. I sometimes
wonder how parents ever dare to run the risk of such a fate for a
beloved daughter. The woman who does not marry should have some definite
occupation as a permanent source of happiness and growth.
Let us assume, for a moment, that you are one of the many young women
who long for some form of service that will exercise all your higher
powers and faculties. Let us suppose, further, that you are free from
those family responsibilities which would debar you from gratifying that
longing. The craving for useful activity is not something to be stifled.
It is the result of one of the greatest spiritual laws of life--the law
that action, progress, achievement are the essentials of a happy and
contented life. The soul wearies of the most beautiful surroundings when
deprived of happy activity. One of the supreme joys of life is the joy
of doing. To feel all one's powers stretched to the utmost, and to
realize that through the exercise of those powers one is making a real
contribution to the world's welfare, is the source of the deepest
satisfaction the human heart can know. Teas and balls and all the
pleasures of social intercourse have their place, but you cannot live on
them. They cannot feed the sources of the soul's power.
"Do something worth living for, worth dying for. Do something to show
that you have a heart and a mind and a soul within you," were some of
the ringing words of Dean Stanley. Half a century ago the world's
emphatic disapproval of the woman who engaged in any activity outside of
the home was enough to clip the wings of all but the most daring. How
difficult it is for us to realize now the scorn and contumely which were
heaped upon noble Florence Nightingale, when she announced that she
intended to become a nurse and to establish training-schools where other
young women might study that self-sacrificing profession! It was called
unwomanly, degrading.
The modern Florence Nightingale finds a world eager to welcome her
services, ready to recompense her for them, and glad to honor her. The
young woman of to-day finds little in the world's attitude to debar her
from entering upon any form of service which attracts her. Thus have our
ideas regarding women and their rights and privileges progressed in the
last fifty or sixty years. We recognize that in some respects men and
women are not as different as we once thought. The craving for
self-realization and the joy of achievement are neither distinctly
masculine nor distinctly feminine. They are simply human.
Find, then, an opening somewhere. If you cannot secure the precise thing
you want to do, take what you can secure and make a success of it. Learn
to do something well, and if possible let it be something for which the
world is glad to compensate you. Mrs. Palmer believed that every girl,
rich or poor, should acquire the ability to earn a living for herself
and others in case of need. She insisted upon "the importance of giving
every girl, no matter what her present circumstances, a special training
in some one thing by which she can render society service, not amateur,
but of an expert sort, and service, too, for which it will be willing to
pay a price."
The third girl whom I have in mind is the one whose presence in the home
is indispensable, who must put out of mind all forms of remunerative
labor, and, therefore, must find her chief success and happiness in
ministering to the needs of loved ones. It may be that the mother upon
whom you once leaned so heavily must now lean on you. Or perhaps the
mother is no longer in the home and you have the high privilege of
taking her place. What better opportunity for growth than this could any
girl ask? We cannot choose our duties. Life makes them for us, and if we
shirk them, there is no happiness and no success for us. If you make it
the rule of your life to escape from what is burdensome and to choose
the path of pleasure, happiness will not come anyway and you will lack
the satisfaction of knowing that you have done right.
Yet even the girl who remains in her own home can usually spare time and
strength for some other service, and it is best that she should. Her
horizon is thereby widened, new friends that are worth while are made,
and she is given an opportunity for growth in a different direction from
that supplied by home duties. I have known many girls who have been
remarkably successful in combining the two--work inside and work outside
of the home. Living in your own home and helping to make it a center of
attraction, hospitality, and fine influence, you are in a peculiarly
fortunate position for rendering a form of service which is needed in
every city and every village throughout the country. Many young women so
situated have done efficient work in connection with the Young Women's
Christian Association or with girls' clubs. Church work is a field that
is open to all. In women's clubs, literary clubs, and organizations for
civic betterment many find avenues for useful activity, while others
find satisfaction in charity work, hospital work, or other forms of
benevolent service.
The young woman who seeks to give her service is often surprised at her
inability to find just what she likes or to perform it well when found.
This is because the untrained worker is always at a disadvantage. It is
far easier to fill a humble position on a small salary, where the duties
are definite and must be performed whether one will or no. In such a
position, if one is earnest and industrious, one must necessarily grow.
With all forms of unpaid labor, the danger is lest one may not take
one's work seriously enough, and may not hold one's self closely to
responsibility. Any trained worker who depends upon volunteer
assistants, as is often the case in girls' clubs and the Young Women's
Christian Association, can tell you how rarely she finds an unpaid
helper upon whom she can depend. If you select some such work, even
though you can give it but a few hours a week, and if you see fit to
throw yourself as enthusiastically and earnestly into it as if you were
taking a position as teacher or librarian or stenographer, there can be
no doubt that you will find in it happiness and success.
When you think of the thousands of homeless women wage-earners, you can
realize how thankful every girl should be who has a good home. Surely
there is, for most girls, some midway ground between starting out as
independently as their brothers do, to carve out their own career, and
stagnating at home. One of the chief results of the higher education of
women should be that they do much uncompensated labor which is now done
badly or not at all. There is a rich field for women of the well-to-do
classes who do not need to earn their living, and this field is growing
larger every year. There is little excuse for idle hands or empty hearts
or purposeless lives. Some have eyes to see, yet they see not. If you
belong to the class of girls to which I have referred, ask yourself what
some more eager and purposeful person in your place would find to do.
It is a splendid thing to live in the twentieth century. The young
people who enter life these days are going out into the busiest world
there has ever been. Never has the need of strong, capable, intelligent
women been so great. The bond of fellowship which unites each one of us
to the whole human race is to be recognized in the future as never
before. Women of the future are to demand of themselves almost all that
was demanded of the women of the past and much more, and they will be
equal to the demands because of more highly trained intelligence.
The greatest temptation of the average young woman to-day in our better
classes of society is to listen too willingly to the winsome voice of
pleasure. I do not mean wrong kinds of pleasure; I mean those that are
in themselves harmless. Nor do I mean that it is desirable that youth
should lose any of its natural joy and gladness. The world can ill spare
any of that. But the continual giving-up of ourselves to things that
leave no lasting impress for good, and that do not lift us above
ourselves, robs us of time and strength that should be given to the main
business of life.
"The great wrong in modern life," says Professor James, "is a desperate
struggle for a four-cornered contentment. Teach those who come your way
that it is not a formal peace which is worth having in life; it is the
deep consciousness of power to create and progress, to create _new_ in
life, and to live for wide, free, unsullied things, which never fail and
never can decay."
The Riverside Press
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