MISS ASHTON'S ADVICE.
That the formation of such an insignificant thing as this Demosthenic
Club should have affected girls like Dorothy Ottley and Marion Parke
would have seemed impossible; but it was destined to in ways and times
that were beyond their control. When the club was making its selection
of members, among those most sought were Marion and Dorothy. Marion,
with her cheery, social Western manners, made her way rapidly into one
of those favoritisms which are so common in girls' boarding-schools.
She always had a pleasant word for every one, and always was ready to
do a kind, generous act. She was so pretty, too, and dressed so simply
and neatly, that there was nothing to find fault with, even if the
girls had not been, as girls are, in truth, as a class, generous,
noble, on the alert to see what is good, rather than what is
otherwise, in those with whom they live. As for Dorothy, she was the
model girl of the school. The teachers trusted and loved her, so did
the pupils. No one among them all said how the sea had browned and
almost roughened her plain face; how hard work, anxiety, and poor
fare had stunted her growth; how carrying the cross children, too big
and too heavy, had given a stoop to her delicate shoulders, and knots
on her hands, that told too plainly of burdens they were unable to
lift. All that the school saw or thought of was the gentle love that
was always in the large gray eyes, the kind words that the firm lips
never failed to speak, and the steady, straightforward, honorable life
of the best scholar.
"If we can only get those two," said President Jenny Barton, "our club
is made."
"They are so good, they'll spoil the fun," said Mamie Smythe.
"For shame!" said Martha Dodd. "You don't suppose the daughter of a
missionary would join a club of which good girls could not be
members!"
"Or the cousin of so famous a man as Kane, the Arctic explorer," said
Sophy Kane.
"Don't dispute, girls; we seem to spend half our time wrangling," and
the president knocked, with what she made answer for the speaker's
gavel, noisily on the table. "I nominate our vice-president, Miss
Underwood, to inform these young ladies of their having been chosen,
and to report from them at our next meeting.
"Is the nomination accepted?"
"Ay! ay!" from the club.
In accordance with this request, Kate Underwood had interviewed Marion
and Dorothy secretly, and had received from both a positive refusal.
"I have no time for secret societies," said Dorothy with a
good-natured laugh. "I want twice as many hours for my studies. Thank
you, all the same, Kate."
"Secret society! what is that?" asked Marion. "What is it secret for?
What do you do in it that you don't want to have known? I don't like
the secret part of it. My father used to tell me about the secret
societies in Yale College, and they were full of boys' scrapes. He
nearly got turned out of college for his part in one of them; and if I
should get turned out from here, it would break his heart. No, thank
you, I'd better not."
So, sure that _no_ from them meant no, Kate had reported to the club,
and received permission to invite Susan Downer and Gladys Philbrick in
their places.
"Sue will come of course, and be glad to," the club said. "Really, on
the whole, she will be better than Dorothy, for Dorothy always wants
to toe the line."
Of Gladys, they by no means felt so sure. "She is, and she isn't,"
Lucy Snow said; "but she has lots of money, and that means splendid
spreads."
"But she won't--she won't"--Martha Dodd stopped.
"Won't what?" asked the president in a most dignified manner.
"Won't go through the corridors with her boots in her hands," said
Mamie with a rueful face, "and get dosed. She'd stamp right along
into Miss Ashton's room, and say,--
"'Miss Ashton, I'm late. Mark me, will you?'"
"She will keep us straight, then. I vote for Gladys;" and the first to
hold up her hands--both of them--was Missionary Dodd.
So Gladys and Susan were invited to become members of the club, and
accepted gladly, not knowing their room-mates had declined the same
honor.
It was in this way that the club was to influence the rooms.
October, the regal month, when nature puts on her most precious
vestments, dons her crowns of gold, clothes herself in scarlet robes,
with girdles of richest browns, has a half-hushed note of sadness in
the anthems she sings through the dropping leaves, listens for the
farewell of departing birds, and tries in vain to call back to the
browning earth the dying flowers. This month was always considered in
Montrose Academy the time for settling down to hard work in earnest.
Vacation, with its rest and its pleasures, seemed far behind the life
of the two hundred young girls who had entered into, and been absorbed
by, the present, and who were roused by ambitions for the future.
Marion's room-mates went thoroughly into the work required of them.
"Your faithfulness during the first six weeks of the term," Miss
Ashton had said to them in one of her morning talks, "will determine
your standard for the year. Do not any of you think you can be
indolent now, and pick up your neglected studies by and by.
"You may trust my experience when I tell you that, in the whole number
of years since I have been connected with this school, I never knew a
pupil who failed in her duties during the first half of the first term
of the year, who afterwards did, indeed could, make up the lost
opportunities.
"It is not only what you lose out of the passing recitation that you
can never find again, but, of even more consequence, it is what you
lose in forming honest, faithful habits of study.
"There are many different ways of studying. I have often tried to make
these plain to you. I will repeat them. First, learn to give your
whole attention to your lesson; _fix your mind upon it_. This sounds
as if it would be an easy thing to do; but, in truth, it is very
difficult. I am sorry to say I do not think there are a dozen girls
among you who can do this successfully, even after years of training.
You can train your body to accomplish wonders, but it is hard to
believe that the mind is even more capable of being brought into
subjection by the will than the body; and, to do that, to make your
mind your servant, is to accomplish the greatest result of your
education. Only as far as your study and your general life here do
that, are they of any true value to you.
"You will ask me how are you to fix your attention when there are so
many things going on around you to distract your thoughts? I can only
answer, that as our minds are in many respects of different orders,
so, no general rule can be given. If you will, each one, faithfully
make the attempt, I have no doubt you will succeed, in just the same
proportion as you are faithful.
"It may be as well, as I consider this the keystone of all good study,
that I should leave the other helps and hindrances for some future
talk; and it will give me a great deal of pleasure if I can hear from
any of you at the end of a week's trial, that you have found
yourselves helped by my advice."
It speaks well for Miss Ashton's influence over her school that there
was not a pupil there who was not moved by what she had said.
To be sure, its effect was not equally apparent. There were some who
had scant minds to fix, and what nature had been niggardly in
bestowing, they had frittered away in a trifling life; but for the
earnest girls, those who truly longed to make the most of themselves
and to be able to do a worthy work in the life before them, such
advice became at once a help.
"It sounds like my mother's letter to me," Marion Parke said to
Dorothy, as they went together to their room. "She insists that it is
not so much the facts we learn, as the help they give us in the use of
our minds. I wonder if all educated people think the same?"
"All thoroughly educated people I am sure do," answered Dorothy.
"Sometimes I feel as if my mind was a musical instrument; and if I
didn't know every note in it, the only sounds I should ever hear from
it would be discords,"--at which rather Irish comparison, both girls
laughed.