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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/37299-0.txt b/37299-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7c1a6d --- /dev/null +++ b/37299-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1437 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Talks to Freshman Girls, by Helen Dawes Brown + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Talks to Freshman Girls + +Author: Helen Dawes Brown + +Release Date: September 3, 2011 [EBook #37299] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from images made available by the HathiTrust +Digital Library.) + + + + + + + + + + By Helen Dawes Brown + + TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS. + + HOW PHŒBE FOUND HERSELF. + With frontispiece. + + ORPHANS. + + MR. TUCKERMAN’S NIECES. Illustrated. + + A BOOK OF LITTLE BOYS. Illustrated. + + THE PETRIE ESTATE. Also in paper binding. + + TWO COLLEGE GIRLS. + + LITTLE MISS PHŒBE GAY. Illustrated. + + HER SIXTEENTH YEAR. A Sequel to + “Little Miss Phœbe Gay.” + + HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY + Boston and New York + + + + + TALKS TO + FRESHMAN GIRLS + + BY + + HELEN DAWES BROWN + + _Author of “Two College Girls”_ + + BOSTON AND NEW YORK + HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY + The Riverside Press Cambridge + 1914 + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HELEN DAWES BROWN + ALL RIGHTS RESERVED + _Published September 1914_ + + + + +TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS + + + + +I—“STUDIES SERVE FOR DELIGHT, FOR ORNAMENT, AND FOR ABILITY” + + +No man could have written this sentence with more authority than Francis +Bacon, for no man ever loved Studies better. In his youth he had +declared passionately that he took all knowledge for his province, and +it was his lifelong teaching that “the sovereignty of man lieth hid in +knowledge.” + +“Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.” I imagine +Bacon writing these words with fervor, out of his own happy experience. +At the age of thirty-five, he could determine what Studies had been +worth to him. They had been his delight, his ornament, and the means to +his usefulness. + +For “delight” he wrote in his first edition “pastimes,” as he wrote +“ornaments” and “abilities,” then wisely changed his sentence. His +beautiful old word “delight” means, I take it, a heightened pleasure, a +pleasure touched with imagination, full of suggestion and invitation. + +I have a far glimpse of its meaning when I hear a young person say that +she is going to college “to have a good time”; a good time for the rest +of her life is what, I believe, Studies will secure to her. You are so +young, I may speak to you of age. There is a new old age for women, with +enlightened care of health and increasing intellectual interests. As for +you freshmen, I have a vision of your erect forms and of your bright +faces at seventy-five,—of your health and your gayety and your wisdom, +you charming old ladies of 1970! Age cannot wither you, nor custom stale +your infinite variety, you women whom Studies have served for delight. + +And you are so happy that I may speak to you of unhappiness. We need +three things to meet life with: a religion, an education, and a sense of +humor. The pursuit of Studies is a refuge as well as a delight. Studies +will fortify one to encounter loneliness, or ill-health, or losses of +any kind soever. The chances of life are such that I believe a woman +suffers from lack of an education more than a man does. He has a wider +world to draw from; she has need of more within herself. When Bacon +writes of the care of the body, he says that for our very health, we +should “entertain studies that fill the mind with splendid and +illustrious objects.” + +In order that knowledge should be a delight, I submit that knowledge +should be remembered. A certain man George Eliot describes, who had a +sense of having had a liberal education until he tried to remember +something! The “culture” of some people seems to consist in having heard +a large number of proper names. “Oh, yes, I’ve _heard_ of him”—the rest +a blank. In our day, “mental training” has neglected the training of the +memory. I even urge a considerable amount of old-fashioned memorizing. +Lay up for yourselves treasure: possess for your own a sonnet of +Shakespeare, a poem of Wordsworth, a passage of Bacon. Lay up also a +good store of facts, such facts as will make the reading of the daily +paper profitable. There is no surer test of your outfit of information. +Shall we say that an educated person should be able to spell, pronounce, +and reasonably explain about two thousand proper nouns? + +When I dwell on the delight of Studies, I take no thought of ease. Let +us have no royal road to learning, but meet valiantly all the hardships +of the way. No girl of stamina is looking for “soft courses.” I trust +that in your freshman year you are having just what Schiller meant when +he talked of “sport in art”; I hope you are having sport in education, +the spirited conquest of difficulty! Do you not feel the great adventure +of education, the romance of the quest of knowledge? + +You should know the keen delight of competition, not so much with one +another as with yourselves. The determination to equal yourself, to +surpass yourself, is a fine incitement. “Set before thee thine own +example,” says Bacon again. + +On the other hand, you have not discovered all the delight of Studies +unless you have secured repose as well as excitement in your +intellectual life. It is “the world’s sweet inn from pain and wearisome +turmoil.” Only in quiet can you practice the abstraction and +concentration that give you power as a thinker. I dare to say that +education goes on with far too much chatter and sociability in all our +colleges. True enough, you are not getting the complete delight of your +studies unless you have the intellectual stimulus of companionship,—the +friendship “that maketh daylight in the understanding.” (Bacon again!) +But you must have also the silence and the solitude in which to brood, +and in which to give your imagination its chance for flight. Have you +freshmen any long, dreaming twilights? Or have we all grown too busy—or +too frivolous—to pause “between the dark and the daylight”? Sane, +strong minds we want, but beautiful, poetic minds as well. The final +delight of education is in that culture of the imagination that makes an +idealist of every fine college girl. + +Bacon himself said of Studies, “Their chief use for delight is in +privateness and retiring.” When he caused his essays to be translated +into Latin, to get them safely out of perishable English, delight was +there rendered “meditationum voluptas.” That our twentieth-century girl +should know an harmonious, well-balanced life, I would see her +delighting in her joyous athletics, but acquiring also the _meditationum +voluptas_, for which Studies have furnished her mind. + +In my youth the word “ornament” was the word of dread in education. We +earliest college girls scoffed at “accomplishments.” Ornament stood to +us for all that was smattering and frivolous in education. _We_ were of +the new order! + +Since the day when ornament was the bugbear of woman’s education, we +have grown somewhat wiser. “Studies should serve for delight and for +ornament,” we now say gladly; education should make you a delight to +yourself and it should make you a delight to other people. Said Poor +Richard: “Hast thou virtue? Acquire also the graces and beauties of +virtue.” “Hast thou education? Acquire also the graces and beauties of +education. Your common sense will save you from pedantry.” You will not +“make your knowledge a discomfort to your families,” as Mr. Taft once +gently expressed it in talking to college girls. + +Shall ornament mean “accomplishments”? Why not? If I were you, I would +do some one interesting, amusing, agreeable thing so well as to make a +small art of it. Have some accomplishment that will render you +interesting in your own home, entertaining to children and to +grandmothers, and that will make you welcome in your own set. + +I take ornament as including all the externals of education, and I ask, +where does education show on the outside? One of its most exposed points +is the letter that a woman writes. “A good address,” in the +old-fashioned phrase, is about the most valuable of worldly possessions. +It should include a good address—a good manner and presence—upon +paper. As for the letter, all your education leads up to it: its +clearness, brevity, point, and grace. “Good sense brightly delivered,” +should describe a college girl’s letter as well as one by Lady Mary +Wortley Montagu. + +In Bacon’s opinion, the chief ornament bestowed by Studies was that of +conversation (_orationis ornamentum_). In the matter and manner of +discourse, education achieves its utmost. It tells upon conversation in +obvious ways. Studies furnish the mind with matter worth talking about, +and they give an appetite for ideas. It may be hoped that they give the +sense of proportion in conversation, and prevent the educated woman from +ever becoming that object of dread, “a talker.” Most American women talk +too much, perhaps because they are so bright, and think of so many +things to say! One hears the criticism: “She is a brilliant woman; she +talks well; but she doesn’t give the other person a chance.” Does this +pauseless talker forget what a delight is the educated listener, quick, +responsive, eager for the other’s thought? One of the finest ornaments +education can bestow is the social grace of good listening. + +Alas that it so often fails to bestow the ornament of good speech! The +failure of the colleges in this matter is lamentable. Its importance is +not brought home to individuals with sufficient severity. They are left +in their carelessness and laziness, with the social stigma of bad speech +upon them for life. The colleges should help to make ladies and +gentlemen as well as scholars. “What a bright girl!” said the woman who +sat next a college freshman at dinner, “but can the college do nothing +to cure her abominable speech?” + +I believe that whatever his early associations, the speech of an +educated person lies within his choice. If he be a person of will, and +of the right energy and ambition, he can conquer provincialism or +inherited faults of speech. It means _caring_ and _trying_. It takes +character, in short. One of the best instances of achievement of +cultivated speech is that of George Eliot, who by birth would have +spoken a rich dialect. + +Perhaps the subtlest ornament that education may confer is that which we +call distinction. After the refining process of the four years in close +association with noble things, “commonness” ought to be impossible. The +beginning of distinction is simplicity and sincerity, all absence of +affectation, pedantry, or the desire to make an impression. Education is +an immense simplifier; it does away with so many unnecessary pretences. + +Bacon sent a copy of the “Advancement of Learning” to a man whom he +addressed thus: “Since you are one that was excellently bred in all +learning, which I have ever noted to shine in all your speeches and +behaviors.” Such is Bacon’s way of saying, “Abeunt studia in mores.” +Educated perceptions and a quickened imagination should make for +intelligence in conduct, and for beauty in all human relations. The +reasonableness of goodness appeals to one’s intellect, while, on the +other hand, one must have character to make his intellect tell. + +When they praised Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond, the great lady of +her time, they said of her, “Every one that knew her loved her, and +everything that she said or did became her.” That is the woman of +distinction, whether countess or college girl. “Every one that knew her +loved her.” Distinction is of a poor, cold quality which has not +sympathy for its final charm. + +If Studies give us delight within ourselves, and add to us, we fondly +hope, such ornament without, what more may we expect from them? They fit +us to take our share in the day’s work. Studies serve us for ability. +Says Kipling, “Knowledge gives us control of life, as the fish controls +the water he swims in.” The utilitarian view of education is very well, +if kept in its proper place; but education, we all know, is for the +making of a life as well as of a living. Some mothers used to say, “But +my daughter isn’t going to support herself; why should she go to +college?” “For delight, for ornament, madam”; and I would add, “for +ability and usefulness in any sphere whatever.” + +Bacon’s exposition of his own text shows that he means by “ability” much +what our New England aunts meant by “judgment.” He says education is of +use in “the plotting and marshalling of affairs.” How does this planning +and organizing go on? How does business move? By constant wise +decisions. Good judgment, you say, is a matter of inborn common sense, +and you don’t get common sense by going to college. I am not so sure of +that, though I grant it is better to inherit it from a grandmother. But +certainly you are learning all the time at college “sense of +proportion,” “the fitness of things,” “sweet reasonableness,” which come +near to being names for refined common sense. + +Life is lived by innumerable decisions, great and small; and a person’s +happiness and success will depend much on making these decisions +quickly, firmly, and wisely. The helpfulness and comfort that a woman +may give to others will consist more in her love and wisdom than in any +material benefits she may be able to confer. + +One field for the ability of the educated woman of our day is the making +of a good home on a small income. She is the woman who will not, +consciously or unconsciously, goad her husband to money-making. I should +like a fresh sermon preached upon the text, “Blessed are the +peacemakers.” This time it should be of those blessed peacemakers who +create the harmony, calm, and love of a happy home. That is the great +task, the first task of women. + +She has no doubt her civic duties, and again her education puts the edge +on her abilities: she is a more valuable helper in the world’s work. She +may be a bread-winner, for herself and for others; and herein, perhaps, +is the most simple and popular argument for a woman’s pursuit of +Studies, one so self-evident that I need not dwell upon it. + +I have been speaking of an ideal education and of an ideal woman, but +where should we consider them both if not in this very place? A college +like yours aims at nothing less! + + + + +II—REAL READERS + + +“Do we make real readers of our students?” was the anxious question of a +college president. I remembered his phrase when I read his annual +report. “Most of these young people,” he said, “are to go out into +ordinary life, into general pursuits, where the one chance of their +maintaining their intellectual growth will come through stimulating them +in these years to interest in some particular line which they may +continue, in the midst of the general pressure of social, domestic, or +professional life. Unless a student learn to read and love books, she +will, in a large majority of cases, be thrown out of all relation to +resources that are in any fair sense of the word intellectual.” He +pleaded that to make a girl a real reader is to safeguard her +intellectual life. + +A student leaves college, not perhaps having read much, but knowing what +she wants to read. Her education has been an appetizer; now she is +invited to partake of the banquet. + + “May good digestion wait on appetite, + And health on both.” + +The hunger for books no doubt began with many of you as soon as you had +learned your alphabet. It was very likely hereditary. Indeed, the ideal +way to become a lover of books is to be, like Mary Lamb, “tumbled at an +early age into a spacious closet of good old English reading.” Fortunate +for you, if you have had a grandfather who reluctantly puts off his +reading-glasses as dinner is announced, or a grandmother who hides a +book in her work-basket. For the real reader has a book close by; he +does not walk across the room for it. If your busy father and mother +still find time to read a new book and talk about it, then you and your +brother Dick will be readers, and you will never know why. Reading is +the most catching thing in the world. When school and college shall have +added their stimulus, the prospect is good for a “full-blooded reader.” + +If a girl should not come out of a reading home, it may be hoped that +she will fall into the hands of a book-loving teacher. There are two +women in the American town who are to be envied for their opportunity: +one is the teacher of “Literature” in the High School, and the other is +the librarian of the Public Library. Both may say, in words of the +Oriental proverb, “I will make thee to love literature, thy mother; I +will make its beauties to pass before thee.” + +“Greedy of books,”—so Petrarch described himself; and he himself was +the first great reader of modern times. I like these metaphors of the +body applied to reading. The books that feed the mind, the nourishing +books, are they not the ones that last and live? The hunger for books +has its rhythm like the hunger for meat. Observe that the real reader +reads regularly,—he has to. The regularity is unconscious: a healthy +appetite does not keep one eye on the clock. The healthy reader feels +faint and hollow for lack of nourishment: he seeks a book and he is +content. + +He reads from the simplest motives: in fact, he is a rather +irresponsible person. He reads for the sense of life: he eats to live, +he reads to live. He is not fiercely following up a subject; he is not +pursuing references. That is another field of reading, which has its +necessary and stimulating part in the intellectual life. Reading to +order is indispensable to a student’s work; but the fear is, lest +“reading up” may leave no time for reading. “I get no time to read,” is +about the most disheartening thing I hear from college boys and girls. A +university librarian said the other day that in their freshman year, +students drew books from the library for general reading, but after that +year no student entered the library unless obliged to. I found a high +school boy working out a problem about pressures and resistances; he +looked up gleefully, “This isn’t for _school_; this is for myself!” It +is reading for yourself, reading for fun, that I am pleading for. + +Yet you, too, say that there is no time in college for reading. I assure +you there is a great deal more time than you think there is. What are +the things that you might just as well _not_ have done to-day? One of +the busiest of men, Matthew Arnold, wrote: “The plea that this or that +man has no time for culture will vanish as soon as we desire culture so +much that we begin to examine seriously our present use of our time. +Give to any man all the time that he now wastes, on useless business, +wearisome or deteriorating amusements, trivial letter-writing, random +reading, and he will have plenty of time for culture. Some of us waste +all our time, most of us waste much of it, but all of us waste some.” + +Culture was in my youth a word to conjure with. Somehow of late it has +become separated from education and almost opposed to it. Culture is +suspected by one of being dilettante, by another, of being selfish. Let +us have a reconciliation of education and culture, and see that they go +on together. + +The real reader is active, not passive. There are people who look upon a +book as that which best brings on an afternoon nap: something for the +dull hours of the day, to quiet one’s nerves, “to take one’s mind off.” +Much writing does appear to have been done for tired people. Real +reading, however, is not a stop-gap. We should take up a book while the +mind has a good grip and can do its part. + +As you who are city-bred ride from end to end of this country, through +prairie villages, mountain hamlets, valley towns, you wonder what makes +these out-of-the-world places habitable. But I assure you, that prairie +town is not so dead a level as it looks, for there is a woman’s club, +and there is a public library, and there are young people going to +college. It is books that make such places habitable. + +The real reader is fortified against solitude, even that worst of +solitudes, a company in which he dare not speak of a book. Books prepare +you to live in strange places, as often falls to the lot of the American +woman. You may marry a missionary or an army officer; you may go to the +Klondike or the Philippines. “You could set that woman down anywhere,” +said a mourning widower, in praise of his departed wife. You can set the +real reader down anywhere. For one small matter, it is something to be +made independent of weather! + +The reader, grown old, has youth at his beck and can forget the passage +of years. Place is no more to him than time; he is master of his fate. +Reading, also, is “the poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release.” + +Our reader is patient; he will put up with a good deal from his +author,—as for instance, when he reads Meredith or Browning. He is +patient of dullness as well as of eccentricity. Lowell’s “dogged +reading” has to go to the ripened experience of the trained reader: it +is required of him that he do a certain amount of unprofitable reading +in the forming of his critical judgment. + +He must be patient and he must be calm. Quick and complete absorption is +the mark of the happy reader. He is sincere and he is modest; his +reading is not for show. + +Common sense tells the reader when and where he may talk about books. +Happy the family that read the same books: happier still the family that +can talk about them! Love of reading is the best safeguard against +gossip, and against excessive talking. One woman of your acquaintance +fills every gap with talk; another fills the pauses of the day with +reading. + +In this country that boasts no class distinctions, we, nevertheless, +have a class at the very top: the privileged caste of readers. What a +freemasonry there is among them! They “speak the same language”; they +toss about allusions; they dare to quote to one another; they take +worlds for granted. But if you belong to this aristocracy, beware of +snobbishness. The snobbishness of culture is the most contemptible of +all, for culture knows better. The other “snobbishness” is based on pure +ignorance of the true values of life, and has so far excuse. + +People of moderate means probably make the best readers, because they +have the largest share of rational leisure. The very poor and the very +rich know not leisure, and its graces and benefactions. “Give me neither +poverty nor riches”—such would be the best condition for the +intellectual life. Miss Jeannette Gilder once drew a pleasant picture: +as she passed along a Boston street of a winter evening, she noted the +friendly custom of leaving up the window shades, and letting the light +and cheer of the home shine forth upon the wayfarer. But to her New York +eyes it was a striking fact that these Boston families sat reading by +the evening lamp; that appeared to be their regular nightly occupation. +She carried away the feeling that the good old Boston of Emerson and +Lowell and Longfellow was not altogether vanished. + +A bookless home! Was ever such suggestion of dreariness! The reader, if +he own anything, will own some books. They need not be many. Some of the +greatest readers have had but a modest number. Those few volumes go far +to furnish your home. No wall covering is so rich. When the western +light strikes across your bookshelves,—and no library should be without +its western window,—the blended colors of those goodly volumes convey +the charm of even the outside of literature. I like Montaigne’s way of +saying, “As soon as I was able, I hired a spacious house in the city, +for myself and books; where I again, with rapture, resumed my literary +pursuits.” “A house for myself and books!” + +No; your books need not be many. They will be more to you if you have +made sacrifices for their sake,—as Charles Lamb did in the days when +his purchase was not merely a purchase, but nothing short of a victory. +If you own but few books, you will know the pleasures of re-reading. You +will find the second reading fixes a book, gives you its essence and its +true proportions. Yet it is rather the intimacies and friendships among +books re-read that I have in mind, when they become all interwoven with +endearing memories and associations. Every ten years you become a wiser +reader and turn a new light upon your author. I imagine three tests of a +book: do you read it aloud?—do you give it away?—but above all, do you +read it a second time? + +Your reading should have much variety, ranging from the newspapers to +the great poets. Of course we must know what the great world is about +and must live in our own age; but the little world of the newspapers let +us waste no time upon. Said Matthew Arnold again: “Reading a good book +is a discipline such as no reading of even good newspapers can ever +give.” Scrappy reading makes scrappy minds, for it destroys power of +attention. + +I believe that there should be a backbone of History throughout your +lifetime of reading. Be sure to choose first-rate historical books; +never waste yourself upon second-rate histories. Biography, I am aware, +is middle-aged reading; and I can only promise you immense pleasure from +it when you are past forty. Those large, heavy volumes in dull bindings, +which did not invite your youth, will become alive and significant, and +full of good society. + +I have never a seen college girl who did not enjoy reading essays, +whatever her sentiment about writing them. Essays, too, are good +society, the companionship of fine minds giving you their best. This +literary form, with its modest, careless name, has yet the widest range +in all literature. Nothing human is alien to it. If you read “for the +sense of life,” a good essay will give you precisely that. + +Books of travel are especially good to read after you have traveled. One +glimpse of the Old World, for example, gives you the clue, the key, +which makes books and pictures intelligible to the imagination ever +after. When once you have this clue, you can read far beyond your own +travels. And while you are on the road, do a little reading day by +day,—Henry James’s “Little Tour in France” while you are making that +very tour; Hawthorne’s “Our Old Home,” while you, too, are in England. +In foreign lands read a newspaper of the country, and read a novel by +its best writer of fiction. + +Said that fine old novel-reader, Professor Jowett, of Baliol, when he +was writing to a young lady, “Have you thoroughly made yourself up in +Miss Austen and the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’? No person is educated who +doesn’t know them.” Good fiction educates not only the intellect but the +heart. It enriches the imagination and the sympathies, and “teaches us +to walk not by sight but by insight.” This is fiction fair, and with +fiction foul, why should we concern ourselves? + +“Who reads poetry nowadays?” people are asking miserably. My real +reader, I answer with confidence. He must have poetry, and why he must, +Richard Crashaw’s friend said once for all in the quaint preface to the +poet’s verses: “Maist thou take a poem hence and tune thy soul by it +into a heavenly pitch.” + +Another old writer once described the four classes of readers: “Sponges +which attract all without distinguishing; hour-glasses which receive and +pour out as fast; bags which only retain the dregs, and let the wine +escape; and sieves which retain the best only.” I am now, of course, +addressing the sieves. Real readers need not take high moral ground +about trash; they are simply bored by it. A publisher said the other day +that he must publish a certain amount of trash in order to be able to +publish some good books. He needs a body of better readers. Mediocre +readers make mediocre books. + +Superior people, however, are often disloyal to their own standards. You +are, for example, untrue to yourself, if you sit at a theater +assisting—admirable French word!—at a play that your whole soul +rejects. It is like a breach of faith to read a book which is moral +trash or literary trash. No mind is safe from the suggestion of such +plays or such books. Said Fielding, “We are as liable to be corrupted by +books as by companions.” Happily it is just as true that we are as +liable to be purified by books as by companions. + +To be quite fair, we must acknowledge some dangers of reading. You +remember Kipling’s bank clerk, who in a previous incarnation had been a +Viking, and who might have written tales as good as Kipling’s own had he +not been so steeped in English literature. I have known people who had +plainly been dulled by over-reading: they were the “sponges” of our old +writer. Over every book we should think at least as long a time as we +spend in the reading. I notice the real reader frequently looks up and +off from his book, to think the better. + +Ask from your book not only ideas, but style. Careless readers have +permitted slipshod books. The writer says to himself, “This is quite +good enough for the people who are likely to read it.” He is fond of the +simile of the pearls and the swine, confident that it is the swine who +have thwarted his genius. Real readers help to make real writers. + +Who are some of the real readers we have known? There is Chaucer’s Clerk +of Oxenford. He owned books, poor as he was; he kept them at the head of +his bed; and there you have two unfailing marks of the real reader. (I +even like that dash of color,—the “black or red” of his bindings; for +the real reader loves the outside of his book as well.) + +I think of Milton, who made the most beautiful definition of a book I +know—“the precious life-blood of a master spirit, treasured up on +purpose to a Life beyond Life.” None but a real reader could have so +nobly imagined the book and its author. + +When Keats read Chapman’s Homer and said that a new planet swam into his +ken, he expressed for all readers the sense of surprise, of discovery, +and of acquisition when they have found a real book. + +Into this noble fellowship you and I are allowed to enter, as we leave +our college. + + + + +III—THE USE OF THE PEN + + +Says the census-taker once in ten years, “Can you write English?” We are +a bit startled by the question: “_Can_ we?” we ask ourselves humbly. It +is the question I ask you freshmen. + +The educated person has the implements of writing at hand and in order: +his inkstand is filled and his pen does not scratch. The uneducated man +searches for a penholder, and keeps the ink-bottle on the top shelf; and +the difference signifies much in the lives of the two people. + +You live pen in hand during your four years in college. You acquire the +useful art of note-taking,—by itself no mean intellectual exercise. The +untrained note-taker brings from a lecture a rare muddle of senseless, +half-caught remarks. But a good mind soon shows itself in its taking of +“points” and getting them quickly to paper. And who does not know that +“a note taken on the spot is worth a cartload of recollections”? + +That a notebook should be attractive and convenient for reference is its +_raison d’être_. One secret of comfort in notebooks is variety in +covers, that there may be no exasperating searches for the right one. +“Buy only good-looking notebooks,” sounds like frivolous advice; but it +is in the interests of scholarship that your notebooks should have an +honorable place on your bookshelves. I would make a handsome page, with +wide margins, large type, generous spacing. Paragraph freely, and drop a +line often. Underline profusely, that you may catch the meaning quickly, +and preserve the emphasis of the lecturer. Use parentheses, brackets, +numerals, letters, and thus organize your matter as you go along and +make it easy to glance at. Have divisions or pigeonholes at the back of +your book, where you can put away and classify all sorts of memoranda. + +With these mechanical devices, the use of the pen becomes the easier. It +will be able to shape sentences on the wing, and capture the thought and +much of the language of a lecturer in full flight. It is a strenuous +exercise, and good mental athletics. + +Yet for all education to be carried on in this way would not be well. +There should be variety in the conduct of classes. That comes of itself, +through the varied personality of teachers. The next man may make of his +hour a quiz. Does anything remain of a quiz that can be written down? A +good exercise for the pen to shape something out of the flying questions +and answers! + +You live pen in hand in the classroom, and also in the preparation of +your work. Note-taking in a library is a fine process in education. +Unless your book is a masterpiece of style, paraphrase and condense for +your notebook. Add your own thoughts, in brackets. A book thus read is +twice yours. I would date every piece of note-taking; for the +autobiography of your mind is writing itself. + +In these college exercises your pen has acquired practice, and to turn +it next to use for artistic purposes should be natural. For it is the +literary art that you are set to study. When you are asked to write your +first freshman essay, you are asked to turn life into literature. +Shakespeare did no more than that. This single, exalted aim should be +yours: and you should remember in your humblest writing Ruskin’s +definition of the artist. He is “a person who has submitted in his work +to a law which was painful to obey, that he may bestow by his work a +delight which it is gracious to bestow.” + +The literary art as practiced in college goes by the excellent name +“essay-writing”: a comprehensive, modest, dignified word. It gives you +liberty to write about anything; and if you happen to have the literary +instinct, everything will present itself to you as waiting to be written +about. To turn into words is the impulse of the born writer, like +Irving, or Emerson, or Stevenson. There is probably one such person in +this company, possibly there are two. But it is to the average young +essay-writer that I address myself. + +As to the matter of which you make your essays, only let it be “the real +thing”: a piece of yourself, one of your own interests. You have active +minds, or you would never be here: to you “the world is so full of a +number of things” that subjects can never fail you. The fact that you +expect to write much during your college life is stimulating to your +observation. You are “out after ideas,” as a college girl expressed it. +You look and listen and read with an eye on your next essay. Once set up +a subject in your mind, and it gathers material as a magnet draws steel. +Everybody is conspiring to help you with fresh points of view and apt +illustrations. You have heard of Madame de Staël’s method: when +preparing to write, she gave a dinner-party and led up the conversation +of her guests to the subject she had chosen. Your essay will also +require solitude and brooding, long walks alone, and possibly hours in +the library. + +When you begin to write, write rapidly, even if you leave many gaps and +many crudities. You will then have something to work upon. Moreover, the +mere act of writing is stimulating to thought. _Movendo move_: move by +moving. By writing, write. “I stared at the page an hour before I had a +thought,” says one miserable young woman. Keep on looking at your paper. +Things will come to you, you know not whence; but you must prepare the +way for them, by thinking and feeling and dreaming, by reading and +listening and observing, with every part of you alive and receptive. +Then wait for yourself patiently. + +It is for most people unprofitable to correct their work as they write, +because the productive state of mind and the critical state of mind are +quite apart. There should be the hot writing and the cool writing. The +fatal thing is to cool off in the first writing: you will soon be +“grinding out” your essay. When the time comes for the critical +re-writing, remember what Schiller said, “By what he omits, show me the +artist.” There is a hard saying, “Art is the rejection of the almost +right.” + +Yet when you subject your work to pitiless cutting, see that you do not +destroy its flow and rhythm. Look carefully to the little connectives +that bind up the thought, words that are only too rare in our English +language. The delicate _nuances_ of meaning are indicated and the +harmony of the sentence is preserved by the judicious placing of these +little words. In revision study to improve the diction. Insert trial +words each time that you read your paper. Use every means to enrich your +vocabulary and to widen your choice of words. Be able to run your +fingers over that loved instrument, the English language, as a musician +lets his hands play over his keys. + +Precision in diction is the mark of intellect, but also of patient +labor. Stevenson said the man not willing to spend the whole afternoon +in search of the right word was unfit for the business of literature. Be +unsparing of your time. The silliest boast is of the short time a writer +has spent upon his work. Authors’ vanity is peculiarly distasteful, +because they are the people from whom one might expect more +intelligence. + +The force, that is, the interest, of your writing, will depend much on +the freshness of your choice of words, and on the freshness of your +phrasing. Yet in the pursuit of freshness, beware of affected or +far-fetched words, or words too old, as “gotten”; or too new, as +“viewpoint,” “foreword,” words that, for mere ugliness, should not be +allowed to exist. + +Write with words, not phrases. Commonplace writing is composed of +“bromidic” phrases. They are very catching. Excessive reading, +unaccompanied by thinking, is sure to produce a stilted, conventional +style. I wonder if college girls know how often they are, even in +conversation, stilted in their language, though often with a +half-humorous intent. I have noticed one who uses a Latin participial +construction even at the breakfast table. + +In order to be vigorous, your writing must be brief, simple, and clear. +Yet in our cult of simplicity, let us not be content with the clear and +simple commonplace. Some books nowadays, though written by the cleverest +of men, have a commonness of style that is a mere coming down to their +inferiors. It will never make literature. + +Put into your notebook what writers have said about their craft. You +will find in Shakespeare some admirable hints about his art, though +people often tell us he gave no account of himself. Modern +self-consciousness has made authors more and more aware of themselves +and their processes. Mark what Goethe, Emerson, and all our later +writers have said of their work. In my college days, we read the old +writers upon these subjects: the incomparable “Ars Poetica” of Horace, +and the pleasant pages of Quintilian. Do you read them now? + +How reading should help writing is a question. I have heard it said that +a professional writer should read some other more excellent writer one +hour a day! How far we should take another writer for master is very +doubtful. Said a Michigan man to Mr. Emerson, as he came out from a +lecture, “Mr. Emerson, I see you never learned to write from a book.” It +goes without saying that we want only original, first-hand work from our +writer; nevertheless, it is true that he may learn something about his +art from nearly every book he reads. You yourselves are observing +readers; observe, among other things, how the thing is done. + +Beyond and out of college, the educated woman should live pen in hand. +Power of expression is power itself, and expression with the pen will +add much to a woman’s efficiency as a member of society. With many +business careers opening to her, success depends not a little on the +ability to write an admirable business letter. Her usefulness as a +secretary hangs on the efficiency of her pen. A teacher’s letter of +application often settles her fate. The librarian will introduce books +to readers all the more effectively if she hold the pen of the ready +writer. The college woman should be valuable in many branches of +journalism. In philanthropic work, occasions arise for wise, tactful, +brief, effective composition, in letters, reports, and public addresses. +The pen is not enough used in preparation for speaking. We should be +spared many a rambling discourse if the orator had first submitted to +its discipline. + +The club paper has a place in many women’s lives. Few of them take it +seriously enough. If they have possession of an hour’s time of fifty +women, they should give their utmost as an equivalent for fifty hours of +human life. To make her club paper worth while, a woman should have +lived pen in hand for a year, reading, thinking, taking notes. The paper +of the educated woman should be reasoned, ordered, and shapely, while +every sentence should have its meaning. As John Synge said of a play: +“Every speech should be as fully flavored as a nut or an apple.” This is +not the club paper of the lady who rises with smiling apology, “I have +had very little time to prepare this paper. I really did not begin to +write it until night before last.” + +Whether women desire it or not, they are destined to take more and more +part in public life, and whatever they may be called upon to do, they +will find that “Have it in writing” is one of the best maxims of the +great world they are entering. + +I would, however, have you first regard the use of the pen in +letter-writing, in preserving the unity and love of the family, in +cherishing friendship, in sweetening human intercourse. It makes society +of solitude for the lonely woman, or for the invalid, or for the aged. +Reading and writing together are proof against loneliness. + +By all means, use the pen as a means of efficiency and of happiness, but +I would even cultivate writing for writing’s sake. I would dabble in it +as an amateur! It is worth while to draw and sketch for the training of +the eye, and for the greater appreciation of others’ work. Write, and +you will be a far better reader. You help to create a literary +atmosphere in which some one else can write better than without you, as +musicians say that an orchestra must have players in the audience. +Writers need the understanding reader. We have not yet in our country a +large enough body of eager, expectant readers, of literary sympathies. +Moreover, it seems a law of Nature that, if many are writing and keenly +interested in literature, out of such an environment a great writer is +sure in time to emerge. + +By writing you may discover yourself. The call may come to you, and +nothing then can stop you. You will say, like Carlyle, “Had I but two +potatoes in the world and one true idea, I should hold it my duty to +part with one potato for pen and ink, and live upon the other till I got +it written.” + +The woman of letters is a type sure to develop from the present +intellectual training of women. Such a vocation should not take her +apart from the great experiences of womanhood: these should but make her +the better writer. Her career of writer will be a higher education in +itself, a steady intellectual and moral development. I urge you to write +because it will hold you to the ideal; it will develop the philosophic +mind; it will stimulate character and intellect. It opens vistas of +happiness, as the practice of every art does. To know the joys of the +creative artist one needs not to write a novel or a drama. He can know +them from a letter, happily written, or even from a fortunate phrase +that has come to him. + +Whether or not such writing bring you fame and money, it will have given +you something no one can take away from you. The modest person of a +quiet mind who does her best and thinks not much about the consequences, +this person shares some of the sweets of authorship with those she knows +to be her betters. The perquisites of the writer are many: the good +society; the sympathy, sometimes the love, of strangers; the mysterious +and fascinating communication with one’s fellow-men. + +People ask why college women have not distinguished themselves in +literature. Colleges for women began as our great literary period in +America was drawing to a close. If women have not been notable in our +literature in the last fifty years, neither have we had another Emerson +or Hawthorne. American intellect has expressed itself in other and +wonderful ways, but not in great poetry or prose. + +Women have not yet had a long enough trial of education to be adjusted +to the new conditions it has made for them. They have had culture +sufficient to make them critical, but not creative; to make them modest +and distrustful of their own work, but not greatly daring in any art. +They do small things delicately and delightfully, but the great works +are still to come. Women need more power to the elbow. They need a +richer tradition, and growth from a deeper soil; for a writer oftenest +ripens through generations of readers and thinkers. + +Do not let this discourage you. Each of us may in our day contribute to +the progress of American literature; for we are helping to make the +tastes and traditions out of which in a later generation a great poet +may arise. + + + + +IV—EVERYDAY LIVING + + +The freshman girl is happy who, in her preparation for college, has +included some knowledge of the art of living with others. Miss Ellen +Emerson once read aloud to our Sunday-School class an essay by Sir +Arthur Helps on this very subject. One sentence I remember: “A thorough +conviction of the difference of men is the great thing to be assured of +in social knowledge: it is to life what Newton’s law is to astronomy.” +Miss Ellen paused, and bade us not forget that saying. The girl who goes +to college prepared to find people “different” has a mastery of the +situation. + +I would have assigned her, as a piece of college preparation, a few good +magazine articles about the United States, with three or four of the +best new books about her country. These would make her glad to talk with +a student from Oregon on her right and a girl from Boston on her left at +that first homesick supper-time. She is, perhaps, a provincial New York +City girl, who has never seen anything but Europe and her own town. Her +horizon will at once widen at college. + +Not that open-mindedness requires you to abandon your own beliefs. +College preparation should include Convictions. Truth and honesty there +cannot be two opinions about; and in the art of living with others truth +and honesty bear a great part. Said Oliver Cromwell, “Give me a man that +hath principle—I know where to have him.” + +A girl should have had some preparation in business habits for living +with others in college. Plain business honesty is a “college +requirement.” Borrowing is, I fear, one of the sins of student life. +Girls of your breeding do not borrow wearing apparel or personal +belongings. But a borrowed postage stamp or a car-fare is a matter of +business honor. So is punctuality; the robbery of other people’s time is +petty larceny. Integrity, uprightness, enter into the art of living with +others, every hour of the day. The girl who is scrupulously delicate +about other persons’ rights and possessions is the girl you find easy to +live with. + +Teachableness is a charming quality in a freshman, in or out of class: a +little wonder and awe become her. A newcomer who “knows it all” is +unbearable. Meekness is an old-fashioned virtue, not enough appreciated +in these days. Yet who does not feel its charm in the unassuming woman, +ready to learn, and to reverence superiority? + +Prepare yourself to be at first of not much importance, to be outshone +in recitation, to work hard without much recognition; but you will find +soon that a teacher will grow to rely on you, will meet your eye, will +welcome your response; and before you are aware, you and she will have +laid the foundation of a lifelong sympathy and friendship. And, when all +is said, the art of living with others is the art of making friends. + +Do not forget your old friends. When you travel abroad, one of the most +important subjects you learn about is America; when you go to college, +you learn to know your home. The first ache of homesickness will teach +you much. It would mean something very sad if you did not feel it. You +would lose one of the tenderest experiences. When the pain softens, you +find you understand your home and your dear ones as you never did +before. That is the reward of the freshman’s homesickness. + +There will quickly come new interests, but do not become so absorbed in +them as to lose this new relation to your home. Much as the friends +there miss you, your college life may be made a constant pleasure to +them. Let us hope that your “preparatory English” has made you a good +letter-writer. Write clearly and legibly, with loving care, that your +father may not say, “Am I wasting a college education on a girl that +can’t even spell?” and that your mother need not sigh, “There is a word +I shall have to give up.” The illiteracy of collegians of both sexes I +know to be a source of pain to parents who sit deciphering their letters +by the evening lamp. It is all a question of your taking trouble, and of +your thoughtful consideration for others. + +Literacy attained, see that your letter gives pleasure, and that it +share with your parents the fun and interest of your college life. See +that it “make old hearts young.” Don’t send home a letter without a +laugh in it. And pray write occasionally to an uncle or an aunt! + +Do not drop your old acquaintance when you go away from home. Perhaps +you have some humble village friends, to whom it seems a fine, romantic +thing that you have “gone off to college.” Every person whom you know +may be in some way pleased and benefited by your experience. There are +little girls who are examining you as only a little girl can, and are +making up their minds whether they, too, will go to college some day. +When you see this bright child peering at you,—there is your chance to +be something adorable! + +No one follows you with more sympathy than the teachers who have fitted +you for college. They have a share in you, remember; for teachers have a +reward beyond money in the futures of their pupils. + +We speak of college girls as if they had departed for the cloister; but +reckoning by weeks, how large a proportion of their time is spent at +home! In short vacations the unselfish mother plans all sorts of +pleasures for her daughter, and perhaps says sadly at the end, “I saw +little of Ruth. She made or received visits all the fortnight.” The +short vacations should, I think, belong to your parents: the summer +gives time for other friends. Some day you will understand what it has +cost your father and mother to send you out of their sight just as you +have become most companionable to them. + +In the case of some of you there are sacrifices made at home that you +may go to college; and you will bravely share with your parents the +“doing without” that is making your liberal education possible. Your +social position in these next four years does not depend on money: it +does depend on intellect and character; on taste, not expense, in dress +and belongings; and on the traditions that you bring with you. “To him +that hath shall be given.” The girl who takes something to college gets +more, as, when she travels, she gains in proportion to what she carries +with her. For example, if you take to college the family tradition of +reading, your college lot is a happier one. + +The poor girl in college has certain advantages: she is respected for +the effort she has made to get there; she at once excites the interest +of her teachers; she finds herself in an atmosphere of sympathy and +encouragement. She is generously praised, and is made happy by the +appreciation of her gifts. Let her guard against vanity and +priggishness. The poor and brilliant girl has her own temptations. + +If she suffer in some things because of her poverty, it does not matter +much. Privations, if they do not injure health, are bracing and tonic. A +girl will learn at college, if anywhere, how to be rich though poor. She +could be placed in no situation where she could more successfully ignore +poverty. Simplicity in dress is “good form” in college. The fatal word +“vulgar” is fixed by the initiated upon display, or extremes of fashion. +Taste and neatness are luxuries within the reach of girls of small +means. + +The rich girl has her difficulties. She is often handicapped by poor +preparation, which is not so much the fault of her fitting school as of +her social life too soon begun. She has had many distractions, with less +serious labor of preparation. College routine will be at first irksome +to her; but if she has chosen to go to college, she has stuff in her, +and she can make of herself the finest type of student. Her money will +be “means,” and she will learn noble ways of spending it. Many is the +rich girl who is secretly helping a poor girl to get her education. + +Rich appointments make a girl’s way harder at college, on the whole. +Scholars are distrustful of the appearances of wealth, sometimes +unjustly. The wise college girl will cultivate simplicity, that she may +be in harmony with her surroundings, and that she may have a free mind. + +The girl of wealth may lack the element of the heroic and the romantic +in the college career of the poor girl, but her compensations are that +she can command all means of culture; she can travel, buy books, visit +cities, and meet significant people. Her wealth buys her a wider life; +while the girl of small means has one more concentrated and intense. Her +pleasures may be keener because they are conquests; she relies on +herself and develops her own resources. We will wait to judge the two +until they are forty. + +Health is one of your “college duties”; so is happiness. + + “If I have faltered more or less + In my great task of happiness,”— + +wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. He was a master of gallant living. He +really had something to whine about, but he lived with all his colors +flying. + +However, I shall not deny that there are “blues” peculiar to college +life. Occasionally they will be part of your education. There will be +wounds to your vanity; and years afterwards you will remember the snub +of some brusque, brilliant professor and will smile to think how much +you learned by it. You will see another girl surpass you, and envy will +give you a fit of the blues; for envy always punishes itself. The +college has, on the whole, an atmosphere of noble feeling, of +“admiration, hope, and love”; but a sin that some college girls have to +fight is the ugly sin of envy. Jealousy is akin to it, and is sure to +enter into narrow, intense friendships. The remedy is many friends and +many interests. + +A genuine source of blues is disappointment in one’s self. I wonder if +you will believe an old college girl’s experience that an occasional +bracing failure is the best thing that can happen to you. It will help +you to keep your balance, and to know yourself. Moreover, it will rouse +you as nothing else will. + +Trifles loom large in college life, its critics say. A freshman’s world +looks black to-day because of a bad recitation or a neglectful friend. I +do not reason away her troubles: I only remind her of Abraham Lincoln’s +remedy for the blues (and he knew well what they were). “Remember,” he +said, “that they don’t _last_.” Also I would set her to some absorbing +task: “work is good company,” and compels her to think about what she is +doing and not of her troubles. + +It was recorded upon the tomb of a Roman lady long ago, “She made nobody +sad.” Make nobody sad with your woes, or your face, or your voice. And +if you wish to cheer yourself, cheer somebody else. You very likely need +rest for your nerves. College girls wear upon themselves and upon one +another by too much talking. Their minds are so mutually stimulating +that they need rest from their own company. One of the first conditions +for a satisfactory intellectual life is a room to one’s self. The +college girl who cannot command it should spend much time alone out of +doors, even if she carry with her a book. + +When the college day is ended, and you look back over its hours, what +will have made its success, and what will have made its happiness? Have +you been “nobly busy”? I leave to you the answer. + + + + + The Riverside Press + + CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS + U . S . A + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Talks to Freshman Girls, by Helen Dawes Brown + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS *** + +***** This file should be named 37299-0.txt or 37299-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/2/9/37299/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from images made available by the HathiTrust +Digital Library.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/37299-0.zip b/37299-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..bba7fae --- /dev/null +++ b/37299-0.zip diff --git a/37299-8.txt b/37299-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b53114e --- /dev/null +++ b/37299-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1437 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Talks to Freshman Girls, by Helen Dawes Brown + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Talks to Freshman Girls + +Author: Helen Dawes Brown + +Release Date: September 3, 2011 [EBook #37299] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from images made available by the HathiTrust +Digital Library.) + + + + + + + + + + By Helen Dawes Brown + + TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS. + + HOW PHOEBE FOUND HERSELF. + With frontispiece. + + ORPHANS. + + MR. TUCKERMAN'S NIECES. Illustrated. + + A BOOK OF LITTLE BOYS. Illustrated. + + THE PETRIE ESTATE. Also in paper binding. + + TWO COLLEGE GIRLS. + + LITTLE MISS PHOEBE GAY. Illustrated. + + HER SIXTEENTH YEAR. A Sequel to + "Little Miss Phoebe Gay." + + HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY + Boston and New York + + + + + TALKS TO + FRESHMAN GIRLS + + BY + + HELEN DAWES BROWN + + _Author of "Two College Girls"_ + + BOSTON AND NEW YORK + HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY + The Riverside Press Cambridge + 1914 + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HELEN DAWES BROWN + ALL RIGHTS RESERVED + _Published September 1914_ + + + + +TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS + + + + +I--"STUDIES SERVE FOR DELIGHT, FOR ORNAMENT, AND FOR ABILITY" + + +No man could have written this sentence with more authority than Francis +Bacon, for no man ever loved Studies better. In his youth he had +declared passionately that he took all knowledge for his province, and +it was his lifelong teaching that "the sovereignty of man lieth hid in +knowledge." + +"Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability." I imagine +Bacon writing these words with fervor, out of his own happy experience. +At the age of thirty-five, he could determine what Studies had been +worth to him. They had been his delight, his ornament, and the means to +his usefulness. + +For "delight" he wrote in his first edition "pastimes," as he wrote +"ornaments" and "abilities," then wisely changed his sentence. His +beautiful old word "delight" means, I take it, a heightened pleasure, a +pleasure touched with imagination, full of suggestion and invitation. + +I have a far glimpse of its meaning when I hear a young person say that +she is going to college "to have a good time"; a good time for the rest +of her life is what, I believe, Studies will secure to her. You are so +young, I may speak to you of age. There is a new old age for women, with +enlightened care of health and increasing intellectual interests. As for +you freshmen, I have a vision of your erect forms and of your bright +faces at seventy-five,--of your health and your gayety and your wisdom, +you charming old ladies of 1970! Age cannot wither you, nor custom stale +your infinite variety, you women whom Studies have served for delight. + +And you are so happy that I may speak to you of unhappiness. We need +three things to meet life with: a religion, an education, and a sense of +humor. The pursuit of Studies is a refuge as well as a delight. Studies +will fortify one to encounter loneliness, or ill-health, or losses of +any kind soever. The chances of life are such that I believe a woman +suffers from lack of an education more than a man does. He has a wider +world to draw from; she has need of more within herself. When Bacon +writes of the care of the body, he says that for our very health, we +should "entertain studies that fill the mind with splendid and +illustrious objects." + +In order that knowledge should be a delight, I submit that knowledge +should be remembered. A certain man George Eliot describes, who had a +sense of having had a liberal education until he tried to remember +something! The "culture" of some people seems to consist in having heard +a large number of proper names. "Oh, yes, I've _heard_ of him"--the rest +a blank. In our day, "mental training" has neglected the training of the +memory. I even urge a considerable amount of old-fashioned memorizing. +Lay up for yourselves treasure: possess for your own a sonnet of +Shakespeare, a poem of Wordsworth, a passage of Bacon. Lay up also a +good store of facts, such facts as will make the reading of the daily +paper profitable. There is no surer test of your outfit of information. +Shall we say that an educated person should be able to spell, pronounce, +and reasonably explain about two thousand proper nouns? + +When I dwell on the delight of Studies, I take no thought of ease. Let +us have no royal road to learning, but meet valiantly all the hardships +of the way. No girl of stamina is looking for "soft courses." I trust +that in your freshman year you are having just what Schiller meant when +he talked of "sport in art"; I hope you are having sport in education, +the spirited conquest of difficulty! Do you not feel the great adventure +of education, the romance of the quest of knowledge? + +You should know the keen delight of competition, not so much with one +another as with yourselves. The determination to equal yourself, to +surpass yourself, is a fine incitement. "Set before thee thine own +example," says Bacon again. + +On the other hand, you have not discovered all the delight of Studies +unless you have secured repose as well as excitement in your +intellectual life. It is "the world's sweet inn from pain and wearisome +turmoil." Only in quiet can you practice the abstraction and +concentration that give you power as a thinker. I dare to say that +education goes on with far too much chatter and sociability in all our +colleges. True enough, you are not getting the complete delight of your +studies unless you have the intellectual stimulus of companionship,--the +friendship "that maketh daylight in the understanding." (Bacon again!) +But you must have also the silence and the solitude in which to brood, +and in which to give your imagination its chance for flight. Have you +freshmen any long, dreaming twilights? Or have we all grown too busy--or +too frivolous--to pause "between the dark and the daylight"? Sane, +strong minds we want, but beautiful, poetic minds as well. The final +delight of education is in that culture of the imagination that makes an +idealist of every fine college girl. + +Bacon himself said of Studies, "Their chief use for delight is in +privateness and retiring." When he caused his essays to be translated +into Latin, to get them safely out of perishable English, delight was +there rendered "meditationum voluptas." That our twentieth-century girl +should know an harmonious, well-balanced life, I would see her +delighting in her joyous athletics, but acquiring also the _meditationum +voluptas_, for which Studies have furnished her mind. + +In my youth the word "ornament" was the word of dread in education. We +earliest college girls scoffed at "accomplishments." Ornament stood to +us for all that was smattering and frivolous in education. _We_ were of +the new order! + +Since the day when ornament was the bugbear of woman's education, we +have grown somewhat wiser. "Studies should serve for delight and for +ornament," we now say gladly; education should make you a delight to +yourself and it should make you a delight to other people. Said Poor +Richard: "Hast thou virtue? Acquire also the graces and beauties of +virtue." "Hast thou education? Acquire also the graces and beauties of +education. Your common sense will save you from pedantry." You will not +"make your knowledge a discomfort to your families," as Mr. Taft once +gently expressed it in talking to college girls. + +Shall ornament mean "accomplishments"? Why not? If I were you, I would +do some one interesting, amusing, agreeable thing so well as to make a +small art of it. Have some accomplishment that will render you +interesting in your own home, entertaining to children and to +grandmothers, and that will make you welcome in your own set. + +I take ornament as including all the externals of education, and I ask, +where does education show on the outside? One of its most exposed points +is the letter that a woman writes. "A good address," in the +old-fashioned phrase, is about the most valuable of worldly possessions. +It should include a good address--a good manner and presence--upon +paper. As for the letter, all your education leads up to it: its +clearness, brevity, point, and grace. "Good sense brightly delivered," +should describe a college girl's letter as well as one by Lady Mary +Wortley Montagu. + +In Bacon's opinion, the chief ornament bestowed by Studies was that of +conversation (_orationis ornamentum_). In the matter and manner of +discourse, education achieves its utmost. It tells upon conversation in +obvious ways. Studies furnish the mind with matter worth talking about, +and they give an appetite for ideas. It may be hoped that they give the +sense of proportion in conversation, and prevent the educated woman from +ever becoming that object of dread, "a talker." Most American women talk +too much, perhaps because they are so bright, and think of so many +things to say! One hears the criticism: "She is a brilliant woman; she +talks well; but she doesn't give the other person a chance." Does this +pauseless talker forget what a delight is the educated listener, quick, +responsive, eager for the other's thought? One of the finest ornaments +education can bestow is the social grace of good listening. + +Alas that it so often fails to bestow the ornament of good speech! The +failure of the colleges in this matter is lamentable. Its importance is +not brought home to individuals with sufficient severity. They are left +in their carelessness and laziness, with the social stigma of bad speech +upon them for life. The colleges should help to make ladies and +gentlemen as well as scholars. "What a bright girl!" said the woman who +sat next a college freshman at dinner, "but can the college do nothing +to cure her abominable speech?" + +I believe that whatever his early associations, the speech of an +educated person lies within his choice. If he be a person of will, and +of the right energy and ambition, he can conquer provincialism or +inherited faults of speech. It means _caring_ and _trying_. It takes +character, in short. One of the best instances of achievement of +cultivated speech is that of George Eliot, who by birth would have +spoken a rich dialect. + +Perhaps the subtlest ornament that education may confer is that which we +call distinction. After the refining process of the four years in close +association with noble things, "commonness" ought to be impossible. The +beginning of distinction is simplicity and sincerity, all absence of +affectation, pedantry, or the desire to make an impression. Education is +an immense simplifier; it does away with so many unnecessary pretences. + +Bacon sent a copy of the "Advancement of Learning" to a man whom he +addressed thus: "Since you are one that was excellently bred in all +learning, which I have ever noted to shine in all your speeches and +behaviors." Such is Bacon's way of saying, "Abeunt studia in mores." +Educated perceptions and a quickened imagination should make for +intelligence in conduct, and for beauty in all human relations. The +reasonableness of goodness appeals to one's intellect, while, on the +other hand, one must have character to make his intellect tell. + +When they praised Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond, the great lady of +her time, they said of her, "Every one that knew her loved her, and +everything that she said or did became her." That is the woman of +distinction, whether countess or college girl. "Every one that knew her +loved her." Distinction is of a poor, cold quality which has not +sympathy for its final charm. + +If Studies give us delight within ourselves, and add to us, we fondly +hope, such ornament without, what more may we expect from them? They fit +us to take our share in the day's work. Studies serve us for ability. +Says Kipling, "Knowledge gives us control of life, as the fish controls +the water he swims in." The utilitarian view of education is very well, +if kept in its proper place; but education, we all know, is for the +making of a life as well as of a living. Some mothers used to say, "But +my daughter isn't going to support herself; why should she go to +college?" "For delight, for ornament, madam"; and I would add, "for +ability and usefulness in any sphere whatever." + +Bacon's exposition of his own text shows that he means by "ability" much +what our New England aunts meant by "judgment." He says education is of +use in "the plotting and marshalling of affairs." How does this planning +and organizing go on? How does business move? By constant wise +decisions. Good judgment, you say, is a matter of inborn common sense, +and you don't get common sense by going to college. I am not so sure of +that, though I grant it is better to inherit it from a grandmother. But +certainly you are learning all the time at college "sense of +proportion," "the fitness of things," "sweet reasonableness," which come +near to being names for refined common sense. + +Life is lived by innumerable decisions, great and small; and a person's +happiness and success will depend much on making these decisions +quickly, firmly, and wisely. The helpfulness and comfort that a woman +may give to others will consist more in her love and wisdom than in any +material benefits she may be able to confer. + +One field for the ability of the educated woman of our day is the making +of a good home on a small income. She is the woman who will not, +consciously or unconsciously, goad her husband to money-making. I should +like a fresh sermon preached upon the text, "Blessed are the +peacemakers." This time it should be of those blessed peacemakers who +create the harmony, calm, and love of a happy home. That is the great +task, the first task of women. + +She has no doubt her civic duties, and again her education puts the edge +on her abilities: she is a more valuable helper in the world's work. She +may be a bread-winner, for herself and for others; and herein, perhaps, +is the most simple and popular argument for a woman's pursuit of +Studies, one so self-evident that I need not dwell upon it. + +I have been speaking of an ideal education and of an ideal woman, but +where should we consider them both if not in this very place? A college +like yours aims at nothing less! + + + + +II--REAL READERS + + +"Do we make real readers of our students?" was the anxious question of a +college president. I remembered his phrase when I read his annual +report. "Most of these young people," he said, "are to go out into +ordinary life, into general pursuits, where the one chance of their +maintaining their intellectual growth will come through stimulating them +in these years to interest in some particular line which they may +continue, in the midst of the general pressure of social, domestic, or +professional life. Unless a student learn to read and love books, she +will, in a large majority of cases, be thrown out of all relation to +resources that are in any fair sense of the word intellectual." He +pleaded that to make a girl a real reader is to safeguard her +intellectual life. + +A student leaves college, not perhaps having read much, but knowing what +she wants to read. Her education has been an appetizer; now she is +invited to partake of the banquet. + + "May good digestion wait on appetite, + And health on both." + +The hunger for books no doubt began with many of you as soon as you had +learned your alphabet. It was very likely hereditary. Indeed, the ideal +way to become a lover of books is to be, like Mary Lamb, "tumbled at an +early age into a spacious closet of good old English reading." Fortunate +for you, if you have had a grandfather who reluctantly puts off his +reading-glasses as dinner is announced, or a grandmother who hides a +book in her work-basket. For the real reader has a book close by; he +does not walk across the room for it. If your busy father and mother +still find time to read a new book and talk about it, then you and your +brother Dick will be readers, and you will never know why. Reading is +the most catching thing in the world. When school and college shall have +added their stimulus, the prospect is good for a "full-blooded reader." + +If a girl should not come out of a reading home, it may be hoped that +she will fall into the hands of a book-loving teacher. There are two +women in the American town who are to be envied for their opportunity: +one is the teacher of "Literature" in the High School, and the other is +the librarian of the Public Library. Both may say, in words of the +Oriental proverb, "I will make thee to love literature, thy mother; I +will make its beauties to pass before thee." + +"Greedy of books,"--so Petrarch described himself; and he himself was +the first great reader of modern times. I like these metaphors of the +body applied to reading. The books that feed the mind, the nourishing +books, are they not the ones that last and live? The hunger for books +has its rhythm like the hunger for meat. Observe that the real reader +reads regularly,--he has to. The regularity is unconscious: a healthy +appetite does not keep one eye on the clock. The healthy reader feels +faint and hollow for lack of nourishment: he seeks a book and he is +content. + +He reads from the simplest motives: in fact, he is a rather +irresponsible person. He reads for the sense of life: he eats to live, +he reads to live. He is not fiercely following up a subject; he is not +pursuing references. That is another field of reading, which has its +necessary and stimulating part in the intellectual life. Reading to +order is indispensable to a student's work; but the fear is, lest +"reading up" may leave no time for reading. "I get no time to read," is +about the most disheartening thing I hear from college boys and girls. A +university librarian said the other day that in their freshman year, +students drew books from the library for general reading, but after that +year no student entered the library unless obliged to. I found a high +school boy working out a problem about pressures and resistances; he +looked up gleefully, "This isn't for _school_; this is for myself!" It +is reading for yourself, reading for fun, that I am pleading for. + +Yet you, too, say that there is no time in college for reading. I assure +you there is a great deal more time than you think there is. What are +the things that you might just as well _not_ have done to-day? One of +the busiest of men, Matthew Arnold, wrote: "The plea that this or that +man has no time for culture will vanish as soon as we desire culture so +much that we begin to examine seriously our present use of our time. +Give to any man all the time that he now wastes, on useless business, +wearisome or deteriorating amusements, trivial letter-writing, random +reading, and he will have plenty of time for culture. Some of us waste +all our time, most of us waste much of it, but all of us waste some." + +Culture was in my youth a word to conjure with. Somehow of late it has +become separated from education and almost opposed to it. Culture is +suspected by one of being dilettante, by another, of being selfish. Let +us have a reconciliation of education and culture, and see that they go +on together. + +The real reader is active, not passive. There are people who look upon a +book as that which best brings on an afternoon nap: something for the +dull hours of the day, to quiet one's nerves, "to take one's mind off." +Much writing does appear to have been done for tired people. Real +reading, however, is not a stop-gap. We should take up a book while the +mind has a good grip and can do its part. + +As you who are city-bred ride from end to end of this country, through +prairie villages, mountain hamlets, valley towns, you wonder what makes +these out-of-the-world places habitable. But I assure you, that prairie +town is not so dead a level as it looks, for there is a woman's club, +and there is a public library, and there are young people going to +college. It is books that make such places habitable. + +The real reader is fortified against solitude, even that worst of +solitudes, a company in which he dare not speak of a book. Books prepare +you to live in strange places, as often falls to the lot of the American +woman. You may marry a missionary or an army officer; you may go to the +Klondike or the Philippines. "You could set that woman down anywhere," +said a mourning widower, in praise of his departed wife. You can set the +real reader down anywhere. For one small matter, it is something to be +made independent of weather! + +The reader, grown old, has youth at his beck and can forget the passage +of years. Place is no more to him than time; he is master of his fate. +Reading, also, is "the poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release." + +Our reader is patient; he will put up with a good deal from his +author,--as for instance, when he reads Meredith or Browning. He is +patient of dullness as well as of eccentricity. Lowell's "dogged +reading" has to go to the ripened experience of the trained reader: it +is required of him that he do a certain amount of unprofitable reading +in the forming of his critical judgment. + +He must be patient and he must be calm. Quick and complete absorption is +the mark of the happy reader. He is sincere and he is modest; his +reading is not for show. + +Common sense tells the reader when and where he may talk about books. +Happy the family that read the same books: happier still the family that +can talk about them! Love of reading is the best safeguard against +gossip, and against excessive talking. One woman of your acquaintance +fills every gap with talk; another fills the pauses of the day with +reading. + +In this country that boasts no class distinctions, we, nevertheless, +have a class at the very top: the privileged caste of readers. What a +freemasonry there is among them! They "speak the same language"; they +toss about allusions; they dare to quote to one another; they take +worlds for granted. But if you belong to this aristocracy, beware of +snobbishness. The snobbishness of culture is the most contemptible of +all, for culture knows better. The other "snobbishness" is based on pure +ignorance of the true values of life, and has so far excuse. + +People of moderate means probably make the best readers, because they +have the largest share of rational leisure. The very poor and the very +rich know not leisure, and its graces and benefactions. "Give me neither +poverty nor riches"--such would be the best condition for the +intellectual life. Miss Jeannette Gilder once drew a pleasant picture: +as she passed along a Boston street of a winter evening, she noted the +friendly custom of leaving up the window shades, and letting the light +and cheer of the home shine forth upon the wayfarer. But to her New York +eyes it was a striking fact that these Boston families sat reading by +the evening lamp; that appeared to be their regular nightly occupation. +She carried away the feeling that the good old Boston of Emerson and +Lowell and Longfellow was not altogether vanished. + +A bookless home! Was ever such suggestion of dreariness! The reader, if +he own anything, will own some books. They need not be many. Some of the +greatest readers have had but a modest number. Those few volumes go far +to furnish your home. No wall covering is so rich. When the western +light strikes across your bookshelves,--and no library should be without +its western window,--the blended colors of those goodly volumes convey +the charm of even the outside of literature. I like Montaigne's way of +saying, "As soon as I was able, I hired a spacious house in the city, +for myself and books; where I again, with rapture, resumed my literary +pursuits." "A house for myself and books!" + +No; your books need not be many. They will be more to you if you have +made sacrifices for their sake,--as Charles Lamb did in the days when +his purchase was not merely a purchase, but nothing short of a victory. +If you own but few books, you will know the pleasures of re-reading. You +will find the second reading fixes a book, gives you its essence and its +true proportions. Yet it is rather the intimacies and friendships among +books re-read that I have in mind, when they become all interwoven with +endearing memories and associations. Every ten years you become a wiser +reader and turn a new light upon your author. I imagine three tests of a +book: do you read it aloud?--do you give it away?--but above all, do you +read it a second time? + +Your reading should have much variety, ranging from the newspapers to +the great poets. Of course we must know what the great world is about +and must live in our own age; but the little world of the newspapers let +us waste no time upon. Said Matthew Arnold again: "Reading a good book +is a discipline such as no reading of even good newspapers can ever +give." Scrappy reading makes scrappy minds, for it destroys power of +attention. + +I believe that there should be a backbone of History throughout your +lifetime of reading. Be sure to choose first-rate historical books; +never waste yourself upon second-rate histories. Biography, I am aware, +is middle-aged reading; and I can only promise you immense pleasure from +it when you are past forty. Those large, heavy volumes in dull bindings, +which did not invite your youth, will become alive and significant, and +full of good society. + +I have never a seen college girl who did not enjoy reading essays, +whatever her sentiment about writing them. Essays, too, are good +society, the companionship of fine minds giving you their best. This +literary form, with its modest, careless name, has yet the widest range +in all literature. Nothing human is alien to it. If you read "for the +sense of life," a good essay will give you precisely that. + +Books of travel are especially good to read after you have traveled. One +glimpse of the Old World, for example, gives you the clue, the key, +which makes books and pictures intelligible to the imagination ever +after. When once you have this clue, you can read far beyond your own +travels. And while you are on the road, do a little reading day by +day,--Henry James's "Little Tour in France" while you are making that +very tour; Hawthorne's "Our Old Home," while you, too, are in England. +In foreign lands read a newspaper of the country, and read a novel by +its best writer of fiction. + +Said that fine old novel-reader, Professor Jowett, of Baliol, when he +was writing to a young lady, "Have you thoroughly made yourself up in +Miss Austen and the 'Vicar of Wakefield'? No person is educated who +doesn't know them." Good fiction educates not only the intellect but the +heart. It enriches the imagination and the sympathies, and "teaches us +to walk not by sight but by insight." This is fiction fair, and with +fiction foul, why should we concern ourselves? + +"Who reads poetry nowadays?" people are asking miserably. My real +reader, I answer with confidence. He must have poetry, and why he must, +Richard Crashaw's friend said once for all in the quaint preface to the +poet's verses: "Maist thou take a poem hence and tune thy soul by it +into a heavenly pitch." + +Another old writer once described the four classes of readers: "Sponges +which attract all without distinguishing; hour-glasses which receive and +pour out as fast; bags which only retain the dregs, and let the wine +escape; and sieves which retain the best only." I am now, of course, +addressing the sieves. Real readers need not take high moral ground +about trash; they are simply bored by it. A publisher said the other day +that he must publish a certain amount of trash in order to be able to +publish some good books. He needs a body of better readers. Mediocre +readers make mediocre books. + +Superior people, however, are often disloyal to their own standards. You +are, for example, untrue to yourself, if you sit at a theater +assisting--admirable French word!--at a play that your whole soul +rejects. It is like a breach of faith to read a book which is moral +trash or literary trash. No mind is safe from the suggestion of such +plays or such books. Said Fielding, "We are as liable to be corrupted by +books as by companions." Happily it is just as true that we are as +liable to be purified by books as by companions. + +To be quite fair, we must acknowledge some dangers of reading. You +remember Kipling's bank clerk, who in a previous incarnation had been a +Viking, and who might have written tales as good as Kipling's own had he +not been so steeped in English literature. I have known people who had +plainly been dulled by over-reading: they were the "sponges" of our old +writer. Over every book we should think at least as long a time as we +spend in the reading. I notice the real reader frequently looks up and +off from his book, to think the better. + +Ask from your book not only ideas, but style. Careless readers have +permitted slipshod books. The writer says to himself, "This is quite +good enough for the people who are likely to read it." He is fond of the +simile of the pearls and the swine, confident that it is the swine who +have thwarted his genius. Real readers help to make real writers. + +Who are some of the real readers we have known? There is Chaucer's Clerk +of Oxenford. He owned books, poor as he was; he kept them at the head of +his bed; and there you have two unfailing marks of the real reader. (I +even like that dash of color,--the "black or red" of his bindings; for +the real reader loves the outside of his book as well.) + +I think of Milton, who made the most beautiful definition of a book I +know--"the precious life-blood of a master spirit, treasured up on +purpose to a Life beyond Life." None but a real reader could have so +nobly imagined the book and its author. + +When Keats read Chapman's Homer and said that a new planet swam into his +ken, he expressed for all readers the sense of surprise, of discovery, +and of acquisition when they have found a real book. + +Into this noble fellowship you and I are allowed to enter, as we leave +our college. + + + + +III--THE USE OF THE PEN + + +Says the census-taker once in ten years, "Can you write English?" We are +a bit startled by the question: "_Can_ we?" we ask ourselves humbly. It +is the question I ask you freshmen. + +The educated person has the implements of writing at hand and in order: +his inkstand is filled and his pen does not scratch. The uneducated man +searches for a penholder, and keeps the ink-bottle on the top shelf; and +the difference signifies much in the lives of the two people. + +You live pen in hand during your four years in college. You acquire the +useful art of note-taking,--by itself no mean intellectual exercise. The +untrained note-taker brings from a lecture a rare muddle of senseless, +half-caught remarks. But a good mind soon shows itself in its taking of +"points" and getting them quickly to paper. And who does not know that +"a note taken on the spot is worth a cartload of recollections"? + +That a notebook should be attractive and convenient for reference is its +_raison d'tre_. One secret of comfort in notebooks is variety in +covers, that there may be no exasperating searches for the right one. +"Buy only good-looking notebooks," sounds like frivolous advice; but it +is in the interests of scholarship that your notebooks should have an +honorable place on your bookshelves. I would make a handsome page, with +wide margins, large type, generous spacing. Paragraph freely, and drop a +line often. Underline profusely, that you may catch the meaning quickly, +and preserve the emphasis of the lecturer. Use parentheses, brackets, +numerals, letters, and thus organize your matter as you go along and +make it easy to glance at. Have divisions or pigeonholes at the back of +your book, where you can put away and classify all sorts of memoranda. + +With these mechanical devices, the use of the pen becomes the easier. It +will be able to shape sentences on the wing, and capture the thought and +much of the language of a lecturer in full flight. It is a strenuous +exercise, and good mental athletics. + +Yet for all education to be carried on in this way would not be well. +There should be variety in the conduct of classes. That comes of itself, +through the varied personality of teachers. The next man may make of his +hour a quiz. Does anything remain of a quiz that can be written down? A +good exercise for the pen to shape something out of the flying questions +and answers! + +You live pen in hand in the classroom, and also in the preparation of +your work. Note-taking in a library is a fine process in education. +Unless your book is a masterpiece of style, paraphrase and condense for +your notebook. Add your own thoughts, in brackets. A book thus read is +twice yours. I would date every piece of note-taking; for the +autobiography of your mind is writing itself. + +In these college exercises your pen has acquired practice, and to turn +it next to use for artistic purposes should be natural. For it is the +literary art that you are set to study. When you are asked to write your +first freshman essay, you are asked to turn life into literature. +Shakespeare did no more than that. This single, exalted aim should be +yours: and you should remember in your humblest writing Ruskin's +definition of the artist. He is "a person who has submitted in his work +to a law which was painful to obey, that he may bestow by his work a +delight which it is gracious to bestow." + +The literary art as practiced in college goes by the excellent name +"essay-writing": a comprehensive, modest, dignified word. It gives you +liberty to write about anything; and if you happen to have the literary +instinct, everything will present itself to you as waiting to be written +about. To turn into words is the impulse of the born writer, like +Irving, or Emerson, or Stevenson. There is probably one such person in +this company, possibly there are two. But it is to the average young +essay-writer that I address myself. + +As to the matter of which you make your essays, only let it be "the real +thing": a piece of yourself, one of your own interests. You have active +minds, or you would never be here: to you "the world is so full of a +number of things" that subjects can never fail you. The fact that you +expect to write much during your college life is stimulating to your +observation. You are "out after ideas," as a college girl expressed it. +You look and listen and read with an eye on your next essay. Once set up +a subject in your mind, and it gathers material as a magnet draws steel. +Everybody is conspiring to help you with fresh points of view and apt +illustrations. You have heard of Madame de Stal's method: when +preparing to write, she gave a dinner-party and led up the conversation +of her guests to the subject she had chosen. Your essay will also +require solitude and brooding, long walks alone, and possibly hours in +the library. + +When you begin to write, write rapidly, even if you leave many gaps and +many crudities. You will then have something to work upon. Moreover, the +mere act of writing is stimulating to thought. _Movendo move_: move by +moving. By writing, write. "I stared at the page an hour before I had a +thought," says one miserable young woman. Keep on looking at your paper. +Things will come to you, you know not whence; but you must prepare the +way for them, by thinking and feeling and dreaming, by reading and +listening and observing, with every part of you alive and receptive. +Then wait for yourself patiently. + +It is for most people unprofitable to correct their work as they write, +because the productive state of mind and the critical state of mind are +quite apart. There should be the hot writing and the cool writing. The +fatal thing is to cool off in the first writing: you will soon be +"grinding out" your essay. When the time comes for the critical +re-writing, remember what Schiller said, "By what he omits, show me the +artist." There is a hard saying, "Art is the rejection of the almost +right." + +Yet when you subject your work to pitiless cutting, see that you do not +destroy its flow and rhythm. Look carefully to the little connectives +that bind up the thought, words that are only too rare in our English +language. The delicate _nuances_ of meaning are indicated and the +harmony of the sentence is preserved by the judicious placing of these +little words. In revision study to improve the diction. Insert trial +words each time that you read your paper. Use every means to enrich your +vocabulary and to widen your choice of words. Be able to run your +fingers over that loved instrument, the English language, as a musician +lets his hands play over his keys. + +Precision in diction is the mark of intellect, but also of patient +labor. Stevenson said the man not willing to spend the whole afternoon +in search of the right word was unfit for the business of literature. Be +unsparing of your time. The silliest boast is of the short time a writer +has spent upon his work. Authors' vanity is peculiarly distasteful, +because they are the people from whom one might expect more +intelligence. + +The force, that is, the interest, of your writing, will depend much on +the freshness of your choice of words, and on the freshness of your +phrasing. Yet in the pursuit of freshness, beware of affected or +far-fetched words, or words too old, as "gotten"; or too new, as +"viewpoint," "foreword," words that, for mere ugliness, should not be +allowed to exist. + +Write with words, not phrases. Commonplace writing is composed of +"bromidic" phrases. They are very catching. Excessive reading, +unaccompanied by thinking, is sure to produce a stilted, conventional +style. I wonder if college girls know how often they are, even in +conversation, stilted in their language, though often with a +half-humorous intent. I have noticed one who uses a Latin participial +construction even at the breakfast table. + +In order to be vigorous, your writing must be brief, simple, and clear. +Yet in our cult of simplicity, let us not be content with the clear and +simple commonplace. Some books nowadays, though written by the cleverest +of men, have a commonness of style that is a mere coming down to their +inferiors. It will never make literature. + +Put into your notebook what writers have said about their craft. You +will find in Shakespeare some admirable hints about his art, though +people often tell us he gave no account of himself. Modern +self-consciousness has made authors more and more aware of themselves +and their processes. Mark what Goethe, Emerson, and all our later +writers have said of their work. In my college days, we read the old +writers upon these subjects: the incomparable "Ars Poetica" of Horace, +and the pleasant pages of Quintilian. Do you read them now? + +How reading should help writing is a question. I have heard it said that +a professional writer should read some other more excellent writer one +hour a day! How far we should take another writer for master is very +doubtful. Said a Michigan man to Mr. Emerson, as he came out from a +lecture, "Mr. Emerson, I see you never learned to write from a book." It +goes without saying that we want only original, first-hand work from our +writer; nevertheless, it is true that he may learn something about his +art from nearly every book he reads. You yourselves are observing +readers; observe, among other things, how the thing is done. + +Beyond and out of college, the educated woman should live pen in hand. +Power of expression is power itself, and expression with the pen will +add much to a woman's efficiency as a member of society. With many +business careers opening to her, success depends not a little on the +ability to write an admirable business letter. Her usefulness as a +secretary hangs on the efficiency of her pen. A teacher's letter of +application often settles her fate. The librarian will introduce books +to readers all the more effectively if she hold the pen of the ready +writer. The college woman should be valuable in many branches of +journalism. In philanthropic work, occasions arise for wise, tactful, +brief, effective composition, in letters, reports, and public addresses. +The pen is not enough used in preparation for speaking. We should be +spared many a rambling discourse if the orator had first submitted to +its discipline. + +The club paper has a place in many women's lives. Few of them take it +seriously enough. If they have possession of an hour's time of fifty +women, they should give their utmost as an equivalent for fifty hours of +human life. To make her club paper worth while, a woman should have +lived pen in hand for a year, reading, thinking, taking notes. The paper +of the educated woman should be reasoned, ordered, and shapely, while +every sentence should have its meaning. As John Synge said of a play: +"Every speech should be as fully flavored as a nut or an apple." This is +not the club paper of the lady who rises with smiling apology, "I have +had very little time to prepare this paper. I really did not begin to +write it until night before last." + +Whether women desire it or not, they are destined to take more and more +part in public life, and whatever they may be called upon to do, they +will find that "Have it in writing" is one of the best maxims of the +great world they are entering. + +I would, however, have you first regard the use of the pen in +letter-writing, in preserving the unity and love of the family, in +cherishing friendship, in sweetening human intercourse. It makes society +of solitude for the lonely woman, or for the invalid, or for the aged. +Reading and writing together are proof against loneliness. + +By all means, use the pen as a means of efficiency and of happiness, but +I would even cultivate writing for writing's sake. I would dabble in it +as an amateur! It is worth while to draw and sketch for the training of +the eye, and for the greater appreciation of others' work. Write, and +you will be a far better reader. You help to create a literary +atmosphere in which some one else can write better than without you, as +musicians say that an orchestra must have players in the audience. +Writers need the understanding reader. We have not yet in our country a +large enough body of eager, expectant readers, of literary sympathies. +Moreover, it seems a law of Nature that, if many are writing and keenly +interested in literature, out of such an environment a great writer is +sure in time to emerge. + +By writing you may discover yourself. The call may come to you, and +nothing then can stop you. You will say, like Carlyle, "Had I but two +potatoes in the world and one true idea, I should hold it my duty to +part with one potato for pen and ink, and live upon the other till I got +it written." + +The woman of letters is a type sure to develop from the present +intellectual training of women. Such a vocation should not take her +apart from the great experiences of womanhood: these should but make her +the better writer. Her career of writer will be a higher education in +itself, a steady intellectual and moral development. I urge you to write +because it will hold you to the ideal; it will develop the philosophic +mind; it will stimulate character and intellect. It opens vistas of +happiness, as the practice of every art does. To know the joys of the +creative artist one needs not to write a novel or a drama. He can know +them from a letter, happily written, or even from a fortunate phrase +that has come to him. + +Whether or not such writing bring you fame and money, it will have given +you something no one can take away from you. The modest person of a +quiet mind who does her best and thinks not much about the consequences, +this person shares some of the sweets of authorship with those she knows +to be her betters. The perquisites of the writer are many: the good +society; the sympathy, sometimes the love, of strangers; the mysterious +and fascinating communication with one's fellow-men. + +People ask why college women have not distinguished themselves in +literature. Colleges for women began as our great literary period in +America was drawing to a close. If women have not been notable in our +literature in the last fifty years, neither have we had another Emerson +or Hawthorne. American intellect has expressed itself in other and +wonderful ways, but not in great poetry or prose. + +Women have not yet had a long enough trial of education to be adjusted +to the new conditions it has made for them. They have had culture +sufficient to make them critical, but not creative; to make them modest +and distrustful of their own work, but not greatly daring in any art. +They do small things delicately and delightfully, but the great works +are still to come. Women need more power to the elbow. They need a +richer tradition, and growth from a deeper soil; for a writer oftenest +ripens through generations of readers and thinkers. + +Do not let this discourage you. Each of us may in our day contribute to +the progress of American literature; for we are helping to make the +tastes and traditions out of which in a later generation a great poet +may arise. + + + + +IV--EVERYDAY LIVING + + +The freshman girl is happy who, in her preparation for college, has +included some knowledge of the art of living with others. Miss Ellen +Emerson once read aloud to our Sunday-School class an essay by Sir +Arthur Helps on this very subject. One sentence I remember: "A thorough +conviction of the difference of men is the great thing to be assured of +in social knowledge: it is to life what Newton's law is to astronomy." +Miss Ellen paused, and bade us not forget that saying. The girl who goes +to college prepared to find people "different" has a mastery of the +situation. + +I would have assigned her, as a piece of college preparation, a few good +magazine articles about the United States, with three or four of the +best new books about her country. These would make her glad to talk with +a student from Oregon on her right and a girl from Boston on her left at +that first homesick supper-time. She is, perhaps, a provincial New York +City girl, who has never seen anything but Europe and her own town. Her +horizon will at once widen at college. + +Not that open-mindedness requires you to abandon your own beliefs. +College preparation should include Convictions. Truth and honesty there +cannot be two opinions about; and in the art of living with others truth +and honesty bear a great part. Said Oliver Cromwell, "Give me a man that +hath principle--I know where to have him." + +A girl should have had some preparation in business habits for living +with others in college. Plain business honesty is a "college +requirement." Borrowing is, I fear, one of the sins of student life. +Girls of your breeding do not borrow wearing apparel or personal +belongings. But a borrowed postage stamp or a car-fare is a matter of +business honor. So is punctuality; the robbery of other people's time is +petty larceny. Integrity, uprightness, enter into the art of living with +others, every hour of the day. The girl who is scrupulously delicate +about other persons' rights and possessions is the girl you find easy to +live with. + +Teachableness is a charming quality in a freshman, in or out of class: a +little wonder and awe become her. A newcomer who "knows it all" is +unbearable. Meekness is an old-fashioned virtue, not enough appreciated +in these days. Yet who does not feel its charm in the unassuming woman, +ready to learn, and to reverence superiority? + +Prepare yourself to be at first of not much importance, to be outshone +in recitation, to work hard without much recognition; but you will find +soon that a teacher will grow to rely on you, will meet your eye, will +welcome your response; and before you are aware, you and she will have +laid the foundation of a lifelong sympathy and friendship. And, when all +is said, the art of living with others is the art of making friends. + +Do not forget your old friends. When you travel abroad, one of the most +important subjects you learn about is America; when you go to college, +you learn to know your home. The first ache of homesickness will teach +you much. It would mean something very sad if you did not feel it. You +would lose one of the tenderest experiences. When the pain softens, you +find you understand your home and your dear ones as you never did +before. That is the reward of the freshman's homesickness. + +There will quickly come new interests, but do not become so absorbed in +them as to lose this new relation to your home. Much as the friends +there miss you, your college life may be made a constant pleasure to +them. Let us hope that your "preparatory English" has made you a good +letter-writer. Write clearly and legibly, with loving care, that your +father may not say, "Am I wasting a college education on a girl that +can't even spell?" and that your mother need not sigh, "There is a word +I shall have to give up." The illiteracy of collegians of both sexes I +know to be a source of pain to parents who sit deciphering their letters +by the evening lamp. It is all a question of your taking trouble, and of +your thoughtful consideration for others. + +Literacy attained, see that your letter gives pleasure, and that it +share with your parents the fun and interest of your college life. See +that it "make old hearts young." Don't send home a letter without a +laugh in it. And pray write occasionally to an uncle or an aunt! + +Do not drop your old acquaintance when you go away from home. Perhaps +you have some humble village friends, to whom it seems a fine, romantic +thing that you have "gone off to college." Every person whom you know +may be in some way pleased and benefited by your experience. There are +little girls who are examining you as only a little girl can, and are +making up their minds whether they, too, will go to college some day. +When you see this bright child peering at you,--there is your chance to +be something adorable! + +No one follows you with more sympathy than the teachers who have fitted +you for college. They have a share in you, remember; for teachers have a +reward beyond money in the futures of their pupils. + +We speak of college girls as if they had departed for the cloister; but +reckoning by weeks, how large a proportion of their time is spent at +home! In short vacations the unselfish mother plans all sorts of +pleasures for her daughter, and perhaps says sadly at the end, "I saw +little of Ruth. She made or received visits all the fortnight." The +short vacations should, I think, belong to your parents: the summer +gives time for other friends. Some day you will understand what it has +cost your father and mother to send you out of their sight just as you +have become most companionable to them. + +In the case of some of you there are sacrifices made at home that you +may go to college; and you will bravely share with your parents the +"doing without" that is making your liberal education possible. Your +social position in these next four years does not depend on money: it +does depend on intellect and character; on taste, not expense, in dress +and belongings; and on the traditions that you bring with you. "To him +that hath shall be given." The girl who takes something to college gets +more, as, when she travels, she gains in proportion to what she carries +with her. For example, if you take to college the family tradition of +reading, your college lot is a happier one. + +The poor girl in college has certain advantages: she is respected for +the effort she has made to get there; she at once excites the interest +of her teachers; she finds herself in an atmosphere of sympathy and +encouragement. She is generously praised, and is made happy by the +appreciation of her gifts. Let her guard against vanity and +priggishness. The poor and brilliant girl has her own temptations. + +If she suffer in some things because of her poverty, it does not matter +much. Privations, if they do not injure health, are bracing and tonic. A +girl will learn at college, if anywhere, how to be rich though poor. She +could be placed in no situation where she could more successfully ignore +poverty. Simplicity in dress is "good form" in college. The fatal word +"vulgar" is fixed by the initiated upon display, or extremes of fashion. +Taste and neatness are luxuries within the reach of girls of small +means. + +The rich girl has her difficulties. She is often handicapped by poor +preparation, which is not so much the fault of her fitting school as of +her social life too soon begun. She has had many distractions, with less +serious labor of preparation. College routine will be at first irksome +to her; but if she has chosen to go to college, she has stuff in her, +and she can make of herself the finest type of student. Her money will +be "means," and she will learn noble ways of spending it. Many is the +rich girl who is secretly helping a poor girl to get her education. + +Rich appointments make a girl's way harder at college, on the whole. +Scholars are distrustful of the appearances of wealth, sometimes +unjustly. The wise college girl will cultivate simplicity, that she may +be in harmony with her surroundings, and that she may have a free mind. + +The girl of wealth may lack the element of the heroic and the romantic +in the college career of the poor girl, but her compensations are that +she can command all means of culture; she can travel, buy books, visit +cities, and meet significant people. Her wealth buys her a wider life; +while the girl of small means has one more concentrated and intense. Her +pleasures may be keener because they are conquests; she relies on +herself and develops her own resources. We will wait to judge the two +until they are forty. + +Health is one of your "college duties"; so is happiness. + + "If I have faltered more or less + In my great task of happiness,"-- + +wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. He was a master of gallant living. He +really had something to whine about, but he lived with all his colors +flying. + +However, I shall not deny that there are "blues" peculiar to college +life. Occasionally they will be part of your education. There will be +wounds to your vanity; and years afterwards you will remember the snub +of some brusque, brilliant professor and will smile to think how much +you learned by it. You will see another girl surpass you, and envy will +give you a fit of the blues; for envy always punishes itself. The +college has, on the whole, an atmosphere of noble feeling, of +"admiration, hope, and love"; but a sin that some college girls have to +fight is the ugly sin of envy. Jealousy is akin to it, and is sure to +enter into narrow, intense friendships. The remedy is many friends and +many interests. + +A genuine source of blues is disappointment in one's self. I wonder if +you will believe an old college girl's experience that an occasional +bracing failure is the best thing that can happen to you. It will help +you to keep your balance, and to know yourself. Moreover, it will rouse +you as nothing else will. + +Trifles loom large in college life, its critics say. A freshman's world +looks black to-day because of a bad recitation or a neglectful friend. I +do not reason away her troubles: I only remind her of Abraham Lincoln's +remedy for the blues (and he knew well what they were). "Remember," he +said, "that they don't _last_." Also I would set her to some absorbing +task: "work is good company," and compels her to think about what she is +doing and not of her troubles. + +It was recorded upon the tomb of a Roman lady long ago, "She made nobody +sad." Make nobody sad with your woes, or your face, or your voice. And +if you wish to cheer yourself, cheer somebody else. You very likely need +rest for your nerves. College girls wear upon themselves and upon one +another by too much talking. Their minds are so mutually stimulating +that they need rest from their own company. One of the first conditions +for a satisfactory intellectual life is a room to one's self. The +college girl who cannot command it should spend much time alone out of +doors, even if she carry with her a book. + +When the college day is ended, and you look back over its hours, what +will have made its success, and what will have made its happiness? Have +you been "nobly busy"? I leave to you the answer. + + + + + The Riverside Press + + CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS + U . S . 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Talks to Freshman Girls + +Author: Helen Dawes Brown + +Release Date: September 3, 2011 [EBook #37299] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from images made available by the HathiTrust +Digital Library.) + + + + + + +</pre> + +<p> + <br /> + <br /> + <br /> +</p> +<div class='center'> +<p><span style='font-size:larger;'>By Helen Dawes Brown</span></p> +</div> +<table class='c' summary='centered block'><tr><td> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS.</p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'> </p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>HOW PHŒBE FOUND HERSELF.</p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>With frontispiece.</p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'> </p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>ORPHANS.</p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'> </p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>MR. TUCKERMAN’S NIECES. Illustrated.</p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'> </p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>A BOOK OF LITTLE BOYS. Illustrated.</p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'> </p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>THE PETRIE ESTATE. Also in paper binding.</p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'> </p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>TWO COLLEGE GIRLS.</p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'> </p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>LITTLE MISS PHŒBE GAY. Illustrated.</p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'> </p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>HER SIXTEENTH YEAR. A Sequel to</p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>“Little Miss Phœbe Gay.”</p> +</td></tr></table> +<div class='center'> +<p>HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY</p> +<p><span class='sc'>Boston and New York</span></p> +</div> +<p> + <br /> + <br /> + <br /> +</p> +<div class='center'> +<p><span style='font-size:1.6em;font-weight:bold;'>TALKS TO</span></p> +<p><span style='font-size:1.6em;font-weight:bold;'>FRESHMAN GIRLS</span></p> +<p> </p> +<p>BY</p> +<p> </p> +<p><span style='font-size:1.2em;'>HELEN DAWES BROWN</span></p> +<p> </p> +<p><span style='font-size:smaller;'><em>Author of “Two College Girls”</em></span></p> +<p> </p> +<p>BOSTON AND NEW YORK</p> +<p>HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY</p> +<p>The Riverside Press Cambridge</p> +<p>1914</p> +</div> +<p> + <br /> + <br /> + <br /> +</p> +<div class='center'> +<p>COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HELEN DAWES BROWN</p> +<p>ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</p> +<p><em>Published September 1914</em></p> +</div> +<h1>TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS</h1> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_1'></a>1</span><a name='chI' id='chI'></a>I—“STUDIES SERVE FOR DELIGHT, FOR ORNAMENT, AND FOR ABILITY”</h2> +<p> +No man could have written this sentence +with more authority than Francis +Bacon, for no man ever loved Studies +better. In his youth he had declared +passionately that he took all knowledge +for his province, and it was his lifelong +teaching that “the sovereignty +of man lieth hid in knowledge.” +</p> +<p> +“Studies serve for delight, for ornament, +and for ability.” I imagine +Bacon writing these words with fervor, +out of his own happy experience. At +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_2'></a>2</span> +the age of thirty-five, he could determine +what Studies had been worth to +him. They had been his delight, his +ornament, and the means to his usefulness. +</p> +<p> +For “delight” he wrote in his first +edition “pastimes,” as he wrote “ornaments” +and “abilities,” then wisely +changed his sentence. His beautiful +old word “delight” means, I take it, +a heightened pleasure, a pleasure +touched with imagination, full of suggestion +and invitation. +</p> +<p> +I have a far glimpse of its meaning +when I hear a young person say that +she is going to college “to have a +good time”; a good time for the rest +of her life is what, I believe, Studies +will secure to her. You are so young, +I may speak to you of age. There is a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_3'></a>3</span> +new old age for women, with enlightened +care of health and increasing intellectual +interests. As for you freshmen, +I have a vision of your erect forms and +of your bright faces at seventy-five,—of +your health and your gayety and +your wisdom, you charming old ladies +of 1970! Age cannot wither you, nor +custom stale your infinite variety, you +women whom Studies have served for +delight. +</p> +<p> +And you are so happy that I may +speak to you of unhappiness. We +need three things to meet life with: +a religion, an education, and a sense +of humor. The pursuit of Studies is +a refuge as well as a delight. Studies +will fortify one to encounter loneliness, +or ill-health, or losses of any +kind soever. The chances of life are +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_4'></a>4</span> +such that I believe a woman suffers +from lack of an education more than +a man does. He has a wider world +to draw from; she has need of more +within herself. When Bacon writes of +the care of the body, he says that for +our very health, we should “entertain +studies that fill the mind with splendid +and illustrious objects.” +</p> +<p> +In order that knowledge should be +a delight, I submit that knowledge +should be remembered. A certain +man George Eliot describes, who had +a sense of having had a liberal education +until he tried to remember something! +The “culture” of some people +seems to consist in having heard a large +number of proper names. “Oh, yes, +I’ve <em>heard</em> of him”—the rest a blank. +In our day, “mental training” has +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_5'></a>5</span> +neglected the training of the memory. +I even urge a considerable amount of +old-fashioned memorizing. Lay up +for yourselves treasure: possess for +your own a sonnet of Shakespeare, a +poem of Wordsworth, a passage of +Bacon. Lay up also a good store of +facts, such facts as will make the reading +of the daily paper profitable. +There is no surer test of your outfit +of information. Shall we say that an +educated person should be able to +spell, pronounce, and reasonably explain +about two thousand proper +nouns? +</p> +<p> +When I dwell on the delight of +Studies, I take no thought of ease. Let +us have no royal road to learning, but +meet valiantly all the hardships of the +way. No girl of stamina is looking for +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_6'></a>6</span> +“soft courses.” I trust that in your +freshman year you are having just +what Schiller meant when he talked of +“sport in art”; I hope you are having +sport in education, the spirited conquest +of difficulty! Do you not feel +the great adventure of education, the +romance of the quest of knowledge? +</p> +<p> +You should know the keen delight of +competition, not so much with one +another as with yourselves. The determination +to equal yourself, to surpass +yourself, is a fine incitement. +“Set before thee thine own example,” +says Bacon again. +</p> +<p> +On the other hand, you have not +discovered all the delight of Studies +unless you have secured repose as well +as excitement in your intellectual life. +It is “the world’s sweet inn from +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_7'></a>7</span> +pain and wearisome turmoil.” Only +in quiet can you practice the abstraction +and concentration that give you +power as a thinker. I dare to say +that education goes on with far too +much chatter and sociability in all +our colleges. True enough, you are +not getting the complete delight of +your studies unless you have the intellectual +stimulus of companionship,—the +friendship “that maketh daylight +in the understanding.” (Bacon +again!) But you must have also the +silence and the solitude in which to +brood, and in which to give your imagination +its chance for flight. Have +you freshmen any long, dreaming twilights? +Or have we all grown too +busy—or too frivolous—to pause +“between the dark and the daylight”? +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_8'></a>8</span> +Sane, strong minds we want, but beautiful, +poetic minds as well. The final +delight of education is in that culture +of the imagination that makes an +idealist of every fine college girl. +</p> +<p> +Bacon himself said of Studies, “Their +chief use for delight is in privateness +and retiring.” When he caused his +essays to be translated into Latin, +to get them safely out of perishable +English, delight was there rendered +“meditationum voluptas.” That our +twentieth-century girl should know +an harmonious, well-balanced life, I +would see her delighting in her joyous +athletics, but acquiring also the <em>meditationum +voluptas</em>, for which Studies +have furnished her mind. +</p> +<p> +In my youth the word “ornament” +was the word of dread in education. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9'></a>9</span> +We earliest college girls scoffed at +“accomplishments.” Ornament stood +to us for all that was smattering and +frivolous in education. <em>We</em> were of the +new order! +</p> +<p> +Since the day when ornament was +the bugbear of woman’s education, we +have grown somewhat wiser. “Studies +should serve for delight and +for ornament,” we now say gladly; +education should make you a delight +to yourself and it should make you a +delight to other people. Said Poor +Richard: “Hast thou virtue? Acquire +also the graces and beauties of +virtue.” “Hast thou education? Acquire +also the graces and beauties of +education. Your common sense will +save you from pedantry.” You will +not “make your knowledge a discomfort to your families,” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_10'></a>10</span> +as Mr. Taft +once gently expressed it in talking to +college girls. +</p> +<p> +Shall ornament mean “accomplishments”? +Why not? If I were you, +I would do some one interesting, amusing, +agreeable thing so well as to make +a small art of it. Have some accomplishment +that will render you interesting +in your own home, entertaining to +children and to grandmothers, and that +will make you welcome in your own set. +</p> +<p> +I take ornament as including all the +externals of education, and I ask, +where does education show on the +outside? One of its most exposed +points is the letter that a woman +writes. “A good address,” in the +old-fashioned phrase, is about the +most valuable of worldly possessions. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11'></a>11</span> +It should include a good address—a +good manner and presence—upon +paper. As for the letter, all your education +leads up to it: its clearness, +brevity, point, and grace. “Good sense +brightly delivered,” should describe a +college girl’s letter as well as one by +Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. +</p> +<p> +In Bacon’s opinion, the chief ornament +bestowed by Studies was that +of conversation (<em>orationis ornamentum</em>). +In the matter and manner of +discourse, education achieves its utmost. +It tells upon conversation in +obvious ways. Studies furnish the +mind with matter worth talking about, +and they give an appetite for ideas. +It may be hoped that they give the +sense of proportion in conversation, +and prevent the educated woman from +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12'></a>12</span> +ever becoming that object of dread, +“a talker.” Most American women +talk too much, perhaps because they +are so bright, and think of so many +things to say! One hears the criticism: +“She is a brilliant woman; she talks +well; but she doesn’t give the other +person a chance.” Does this pauseless +talker forget what a delight is the educated +listener, quick, responsive, eager +for the other’s thought? One of the +finest ornaments education can bestow +is the social grace of good listening. +</p> +<p> +Alas that it so often fails to bestow +the ornament of good speech! The failure +of the colleges in this matter is +lamentable. Its importance is not +brought home to individuals with sufficient +severity. They are left in their +carelessness and laziness, with the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13'></a>13</span> +social stigma of bad speech upon +them for life. The colleges should help +to make ladies and gentlemen as well +as scholars. “What a bright girl!” +said the woman who sat next a college +freshman at dinner, “but can the college +do nothing to cure her abominable +speech?” +</p> +<p> +I believe that whatever his early +associations, the speech of an educated +person lies within his choice. +If he be a person of will, and of the +right energy and ambition, he can +conquer provincialism or inherited +faults of speech. It means <em>caring</em> +and <em>trying</em>. It takes character, in +short. One of the best instances of +achievement of cultivated speech is +that of George Eliot, who by birth +would have spoken a rich dialect. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14'></a>14</span> +</p> +<p> +Perhaps the subtlest ornament that +education may confer is that which +we call distinction. After the refining +process of the four years in close association +with noble things, “commonness” +ought to be impossible. The +beginning of distinction is simplicity +and sincerity, all absence of affectation, +pedantry, or the desire to make +an impression. Education is an immense +simplifier; it does away with +so many unnecessary pretences. +</p> +<p> +Bacon sent a copy of the “Advancement +of Learning” to a man whom he +addressed thus: “Since you are one +that was excellently bred in all learning, +which I have ever noted to shine in +all your speeches and behaviors.” Such +is Bacon’s way of saying, “Abeunt +studia in mores.” Educated perceptions and a quickened +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15'></a>15</span> +imagination +should make for intelligence in conduct, +and for beauty in all human relations. +The reasonableness of goodness +appeals to one’s intellect, while, +on the other hand, one must have +character to make his intellect tell. +</p> +<p> +When they praised Lady Margaret, +Countess of Richmond, the great lady +of her time, they said of her, “Every +one that knew her loved her, and everything +that she said or did became +her.” That is the woman of distinction, +whether countess or college girl. +“Every one that knew her loved her.” +Distinction is of a poor, cold quality +which has not sympathy for its final +charm. +</p> +<p> +If Studies give us delight within ourselves, +and add to us, we fondly hope, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16'></a>16</span> +such ornament without, what more +may we expect from them? They +fit us to take our share in the day’s +work. Studies serve us for ability. +Says Kipling, “Knowledge gives us +control of life, as the fish controls the +water he swims in.” The utilitarian +view of education is very well, if kept +in its proper place; but education, we +all know, is for the making of a life +as well as of a living. Some mothers +used to say, “But my daughter isn’t +going to support herself; why should +she go to college?” “For delight, for +ornament, madam”; and I would add, +“for ability and usefulness in any +sphere whatever.” +</p> +<p> +Bacon’s exposition of his own text +shows that he means by “ability” +much what our New England aunts +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17'></a>17</span> +meant by “judgment.” He says education +is of use in “the plotting and +marshalling of affairs.” How does this +planning and organizing go on? How +does business move? By constant wise +decisions. Good judgment, you say, +is a matter of inborn common sense, +and you don’t get common sense by +going to college. I am not so sure of +that, though I grant it is better to +inherit it from a grandmother. But +certainly you are learning all the time +at college “sense of proportion,” “the +fitness of things,” “sweet reasonableness,” +which come near to being names +for refined common sense. +</p> +<p> +Life is lived by innumerable decisions, +great and small; and a person’s +happiness and success will depend +much on making these decisions +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18'></a>18</span> +quickly, firmly, and wisely. The helpfulness +and comfort that a woman may +give to others will consist more in her +love and wisdom than in any material +benefits she may be able to confer. +</p> +<p> +One field for the ability of the educated +woman of our day is the making +of a good home on a small income. She +is the woman who will not, consciously +or unconsciously, goad her husband +to money-making. I should like a +fresh sermon preached upon the text, +“Blessed are the peacemakers.” This +time it should be of those blessed +peacemakers who create the harmony, +calm, and love of a happy home. That +is the great task, the first task of women. +</p> +<p> +She has no doubt her civic duties, +and again her education puts the edge +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19'></a>19</span> +on her abilities: she is a more valuable +helper in the world’s work. She may +be a bread-winner, for herself and for +others; and herein, perhaps, is the +most simple and popular argument for +a woman’s pursuit of Studies, one so +self-evident that I need not dwell upon +it. +</p> +<p> +I have been speaking of an ideal education +and of an ideal woman, but +where should we consider them both +if not in this very place? A college +like yours aims at nothing less! +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20'></a>20</span><a name='chII' id='chII'></a>II—REAL READERS</h2> +<p> +“Do we make real readers of our +students?” was the anxious question +of a college president. I remembered +his phrase when I read his annual report. +“Most of these young people,” +he said, “are to go out into ordinary +life, into general pursuits, where the +one chance of their maintaining their +intellectual growth will come through +stimulating them in these years to +interest in some particular line which +they may continue, in the midst of +the general pressure of social, domestic, +or professional life. Unless a student +learn to read and love books, she will, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21'></a>21</span> +in a large majority of cases, be thrown +out of all relation to resources that +are in any fair sense of the word intellectual.” +He pleaded that to make +a girl a real reader is to safeguard her +intellectual life. +</p> +<p> +A student leaves college, not perhaps +having read much, but knowing what +she wants to read. Her education +has been an appetizer; now she is +invited to partake of the banquet. +</p> +<p> + “May good digestion wait on appetite,<br /> + And health on both.”<br /> +</p> +<p> +The hunger for books no doubt began +with many of you as soon as you had +learned your alphabet. It was very +likely hereditary. Indeed, the ideal +way to become a lover of books is to +be, like Mary Lamb, “tumbled at an +early age into a spacious closet of good +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22'></a>22</span> +old English reading.” Fortunate for +you, if you have had a grandfather +who reluctantly puts off his reading-glasses +as dinner is announced, or a +grandmother who hides a book in her +work-basket. For the real reader has a +book close by; he does not walk across +the room for it. If your busy father +and mother still find time to read a new +book and talk about it, then you and +your brother Dick will be readers, and +you will never know why. Reading is +the most catching thing in the world. +When school and college shall have +added their stimulus, the prospect is +good for a “full-blooded reader.” +</p> +<p> +If a girl should not come out of a +reading home, it may be hoped that she +will fall into the hands of a book-loving +teacher. There are two women +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23'></a>23</span> +in the American town who are to be +envied for their opportunity: one is the +teacher of “Literature” in the High +School, and the other is the librarian +of the Public Library. Both may say, +in words of the Oriental proverb, “I +will make thee to love literature, thy +mother; I will make its beauties to +pass before thee.” +</p> +<p> +“Greedy of books,”—so Petrarch +described himself; and he himself was +the first great reader of modern times. +I like these metaphors of the body applied +to reading. The books that feed +the mind, the nourishing books, are +they not the ones that last and live? +The hunger for books has its rhythm +like the hunger for meat. Observe that +the real reader reads regularly,—he +has to. The regularity is unconscious: +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24'></a>24</span> +a healthy appetite does not keep one +eye on the clock. The healthy reader +feels faint and hollow for lack of nourishment: +he seeks a book and he is +content. +</p> +<p> +He reads from the simplest motives: +in fact, he is a rather irresponsible +person. He reads for the sense of life: +he eats to live, he reads to live. He is +not fiercely following up a subject; +he is not pursuing references. That +is another field of reading, which has +its necessary and stimulating part in +the intellectual life. Reading to order +is indispensable to a student’s work; +but the fear is, lest “reading up” +may leave no time for reading. “I +get no time to read,” is about the +most disheartening thing I hear from +college boys and girls. A university +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25'></a>25</span> +librarian said the other day that in +their freshman year, students drew +books from the library for general +reading, but after that year no student +entered the library unless obliged +to. I found a high school boy working +out a problem about pressures and resistances; +he looked up gleefully, “This +isn’t for <em>school</em>; this is for myself!” +It is reading for yourself, reading for +fun, that I am pleading for. +</p> +<p> +Yet you, too, say that there is no +time in college for reading. I assure +you there is a great deal more time +than you think there is. What are +the things that you might just as well +<em>not</em> have done to-day? One of the +busiest of men, Matthew Arnold, wrote: +“The plea that this or that man has +no time for culture will vanish as soon +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26'></a>26</span> +as we desire culture so much that we +begin to examine seriously our present +use of our time. Give to any man all +the time that he now wastes, on useless +business, wearisome or deteriorating +amusements, trivial letter-writing, random +reading, and he will have plenty +of time for culture. Some of us waste +all our time, most of us waste much of +it, but all of us waste some.” +</p> +<p> +Culture was in my youth a word to +conjure with. Somehow of late it has +become separated from education and +almost opposed to it. Culture is suspected +by one of being dilettante, by +another, of being selfish. Let us have +a reconciliation of education and culture, +and see that they go on together. +</p> +<p> +The real reader is active, not passive. +There are people who look upon a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27'></a>27</span> +book as that which best brings on an +afternoon nap: something for the dull +hours of the day, to quiet one’s nerves, +“to take one’s mind off.” Much writing +does appear to have been done +for tired people. Real reading, however, +is not a stop-gap. We should +take up a book while the mind has a +good grip and can do its part. +</p> +<p> +As you who are city-bred ride from +end to end of this country, through +prairie villages, mountain hamlets, valley +towns, you wonder what makes +these out-of-the-world places habitable. +But I assure you, that prairie town is +not so dead a level as it looks, for there +is a woman’s club, and there is a public +library, and there are young people +going to college. It is books that make +such places habitable. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28'></a>28</span> +</p> +<p> +The real reader is fortified against +solitude, even that worst of solitudes, +a company in which he dare not speak +of a book. Books prepare you to +live in strange places, as often falls +to the lot of the American woman. +You may marry a missionary or an +army officer; you may go to the +Klondike or the Philippines. “You +could set that woman down anywhere,” +said a mourning widower, +in praise of his departed wife. You +can set the real reader down anywhere. +For one small matter, it is +something to be made independent +of weather! +</p> +<p> +The reader, grown old, has youth +at his beck and can forget the passage +of years. Place is no more to him than +time; he is master of his fate. Reading, also, is +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29'></a>29</span> +“the poor man’s wealth, +the prisoner’s release.” +</p> +<p> +Our reader is patient; he will put +up with a good deal from his author,—as +for instance, when he reads Meredith +or Browning. He is patient of +dullness as well as of eccentricity. +Lowell’s “dogged reading” has to go +to the ripened experience of the trained +reader: it is required of him that he +do a certain amount of unprofitable +reading in the forming of his critical +judgment. +</p> +<p> +He must be patient and he must be +calm. Quick and complete absorption +is the mark of the happy reader. +He is sincere and he is modest; his +reading is not for show. +</p> +<p> +Common sense tells the reader when +and where he may talk about books. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30'></a>30</span> +Happy the family that read the same +books: happier still the family that +can talk about them! Love of reading +is the best safeguard against gossip, +and against excessive talking. One +woman of your acquaintance fills every +gap with talk; another fills the pauses +of the day with reading. +</p> +<p> +In this country that boasts no class +distinctions, we, nevertheless, have a +class at the very top: the privileged +caste of readers. What a freemasonry +there is among them! They “speak the +same language”; they toss about allusions; +they dare to quote to one another; +they take worlds for granted. +But if you belong to this aristocracy, +beware of snobbishness. The snobbishness +of culture is the most contemptible +of all, for culture knows better. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31'></a>31</span> +The other “snobbishness” is based on +pure ignorance of the true values of +life, and has so far excuse. +</p> +<p> +People of moderate means probably +make the best readers, because they +have the largest share of rational leisure. +The very poor and the very rich +know not leisure, and its graces and +benefactions. “Give me neither poverty +nor riches”—such would be the +best condition for the intellectual life. +Miss Jeannette Gilder once drew a +pleasant picture: as she passed along +a Boston street of a winter evening, she +noted the friendly custom of leaving +up the window shades, and letting the +light and cheer of the home shine forth +upon the wayfarer. But to her New +York eyes it was a striking fact that +these Boston families sat reading by +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32'></a>32</span> +the evening lamp; that appeared to +be their regular nightly occupation. +She carried away the feeling that the +good old Boston of Emerson and Lowell +and Longfellow was not altogether +vanished. +</p> +<p> +A bookless home! Was ever such +suggestion of dreariness! The reader, +if he own anything, will own some +books. They need not be many. +Some of the greatest readers have had +but a modest number. Those few +volumes go far to furnish your home. +No wall covering is so rich. When +the western light strikes across your +bookshelves,—and no library should +be without its western window,—the +blended colors of those goodly volumes +convey the charm of even the outside of +literature. I like Montaigne’s way of +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33'></a>33</span> +saying, “As soon as I was able, I hired +a spacious house in the city, for myself +and books; where I again, with rapture, +resumed my literary pursuits.” “A +house for myself and books!” +</p> +<p> +No; your books need not be many. +They will be more to you if you have +made sacrifices for their sake,—as +Charles Lamb did in the days when +his purchase was not merely a purchase, +but nothing short of a victory. +If you own but few books, you will +know the pleasures of re-reading. You +will find the second reading fixes a +book, gives you its essence and its +true proportions. Yet it is rather +the intimacies and friendships among +books re-read that I have in mind, +when they become all interwoven with +endearing memories and associations. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34'></a>34</span> +Every ten years you become a wiser +reader and turn a new light upon +your author. I imagine three tests of +a book: do you read it aloud?—do +you give it away?—but above all, +do you read it a second time? +</p> +<p> +Your reading should have much +variety, ranging from the newspapers +to the great poets. Of course we must +know what the great world is about +and must live in our own age; but the +little world of the newspapers let us +waste no time upon. Said Matthew +Arnold again: “Reading a good book +is a discipline such as no reading of +even good newspapers can ever give.” +Scrappy reading makes scrappy minds, +for it destroys power of attention. +</p> +<p> +I believe that there should be a backbone +of History throughout your lifetime of reading. Be +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35'></a>35</span> +sure to choose +first-rate historical books; never waste +yourself upon second-rate histories. +Biography, I am aware, is middle-aged +reading; and I can only promise you +immense pleasure from it when you +are past forty. Those large, heavy +volumes in dull bindings, which did +not invite your youth, will become +alive and significant, and full of good +society. +</p> +<p> +I have never a seen college girl who +did not enjoy reading essays, whatever +her sentiment about writing them. +Essays, too, are good society, the companionship +of fine minds giving you +their best. This literary form, with +its modest, careless name, has yet +the widest range in all literature. +Nothing human is alien to it. If you +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36'></a>36</span> +read “for the sense of life,” a good +essay will give you precisely that. +</p> +<p> +Books of travel are especially good +to read after you have traveled. One +glimpse of the Old World, for example, +gives you the clue, the key, which +makes books and pictures intelligible to +the imagination ever after. When +once you have this clue, you can read +far beyond your own travels. And +while you are on the road, do a little +reading day by day,—Henry James’s +“Little Tour in France” while you are +making that very tour; Hawthorne’s +“Our Old Home,” while you, too, are +in England. In foreign lands read a +newspaper of the country, and read a +novel by its best writer of fiction. +</p> +<p> +Said that fine old novel-reader, Professor +Jowett, of Baliol, when he was +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37'></a>37</span> +writing to a young lady, “Have you +thoroughly made yourself up in Miss +Austen and the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’? +No person is educated who doesn’t +know them.” Good fiction educates +not only the intellect but the heart. +It enriches the imagination and the +sympathies, and “teaches us to walk +not by sight but by insight.” This is +fiction fair, and with fiction foul, why +should we concern ourselves? +</p> +<p> +“Who reads poetry nowadays?” +people are asking miserably. My real +reader, I answer with confidence. He +must have poetry, and why he must, +Richard Crashaw’s friend said once +for all in the quaint preface to the +poet’s verses: “Maist thou take a +poem hence and tune thy soul by it +into a heavenly pitch.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38'></a>38</span> +</p> +<p> +Another old writer once described +the four classes of readers: “Sponges +which attract all without distinguishing; +hour-glasses which receive and +pour out as fast; bags which only retain +the dregs, and let the wine escape; +and sieves which retain the best +only.” I am now, of course, addressing +the sieves. Real readers need not +take high moral ground about trash; +they are simply bored by it. A publisher +said the other day that he must +publish a certain amount of trash in +order to be able to publish some good +books. He needs a body of better +readers. Mediocre readers make mediocre +books. +</p> +<p> +Superior people, however, are often +disloyal to their own standards. You +are, for example, untrue to yourself, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39'></a>39</span> +if you sit at a theater assisting—admirable +French word!—at a play +that your whole soul rejects. It is like +a breach of faith to read a book which +is moral trash or literary trash. No +mind is safe from the suggestion of +such plays or such books. Said Fielding, +“We are as liable to be corrupted +by books as by companions.” Happily +it is just as true that we are as +liable to be purified by books as by +companions. +</p> +<p> +To be quite fair, we must acknowledge +some dangers of reading. You +remember Kipling’s bank clerk, who +in a previous incarnation had been a +Viking, and who might have written +tales as good as Kipling’s own had +he not been so steeped in English +literature. I have known people who +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40'></a>40</span> +had plainly been dulled by over-reading: +they were the “sponges” of our +old writer. Over every book we should +think at least as long a time as we +spend in the reading. I notice the +real reader frequently looks up and +off from his book, to think the +better. +</p> +<p> +Ask from your book not only ideas, +but style. Careless readers have permitted +slipshod books. The writer +says to himself, “This is quite good +enough for the people who are likely +to read it.” He is fond of the simile +of the pearls and the swine, confident +that it is the swine who have thwarted +his genius. Real readers help to make +real writers. +</p> +<p> +Who are some of the real readers +we have known? There is Chaucer’s +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41'></a>41</span> +Clerk of Oxenford. He owned books, +poor as he was; he kept them at the +head of his bed; and there you have +two unfailing marks of the real reader. +(I even like that dash of color,—the +“black or red” of his bindings; for +the real reader loves the outside of +his book as well.) +</p> +<p> +I think of Milton, who made the +most beautiful definition of a book I +know—“the precious life-blood of a +master spirit, treasured up on purpose +to a Life beyond Life.” None +but a real reader could have so +nobly imagined the book and its +author. +</p> +<p> +When Keats read Chapman’s Homer +and said that a new planet swam into +his ken, he expressed for all readers +the sense of surprise, of discovery, and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42'></a>42</span> +of acquisition when they have found a +real book. +</p> +<p> +Into this noble fellowship you and I +are allowed to enter, as we leave our +college. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43'></a>43</span><a name='chIII' id='chIII'></a>III—THE USE OF THE PEN</h2> +<p> +Says the census-taker once in ten +years, “Can you write English?” We +are a bit startled by the question: +“<em>Can</em> we?” we ask ourselves humbly. +It is the question I ask you freshmen. +</p> +<p> +The educated person has the implements +of writing at hand and in +order: his inkstand is filled and his pen +does not scratch. The uneducated +man searches for a penholder, and +keeps the ink-bottle on the top shelf; +and the difference signifies much in the +lives of the two people. +</p> +<p> +You live pen in hand during your +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44'></a>44</span> +four years in college. You acquire +the useful art of note-taking,—by +itself no mean intellectual exercise. +The untrained note-taker brings from +a lecture a rare muddle of senseless, +half-caught remarks. But a good +mind soon shows itself in its taking of +“points” and getting them quickly to +paper. And who does not know that +“a note taken on the spot is worth a +cartload of recollections”? +</p> +<p> +That a notebook should be attractive +and convenient for reference is its +<em>raison d’être</em>. One secret of comfort +in notebooks is variety in covers, +that there may be no exasperating +searches for the right one. “Buy only +good-looking notebooks,” sounds like +frivolous advice; but it is in the interests +of scholarship that your notebooks should have an honorable +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45'></a>45</span> +place +on your bookshelves. I would make +a handsome page, with wide margins, +large type, generous spacing. Paragraph +freely, and drop a line often. +Underline profusely, that you may +catch the meaning quickly, and preserve +the emphasis of the lecturer. +Use parentheses, brackets, numerals, +letters, and thus organize your matter +as you go along and make it easy to +glance at. Have divisions or pigeonholes +at the back of your book, where +you can put away and classify all +sorts of memoranda. +</p> +<p> +With these mechanical devices, the +use of the pen becomes the easier. +It will be able to shape sentences on +the wing, and capture the thought and +much of the language of a lecturer in +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46'></a>46</span> +full flight. It is a strenuous exercise, +and good mental athletics. +</p> +<p> +Yet for all education to be carried +on in this way would not be well. +There should be variety in the conduct +of classes. That comes of itself, +through the varied personality +of teachers. The next man may make +of his hour a quiz. Does anything +remain of a quiz that can be written +down? A good exercise for the pen to +shape something out of the flying +questions and answers! +</p> +<p> +You live pen in hand in the classroom, +and also in the preparation of +your work. Note-taking in a library +is a fine process in education. Unless +your book is a masterpiece of style, +paraphrase and condense for your +notebook. Add your own thoughts, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47'></a>47</span> +in brackets. A book thus read is twice +yours. I would date every piece of +note-taking; for the autobiography of +your mind is writing itself. +</p> +<p> +In these college exercises your pen +has acquired practice, and to turn it +next to use for artistic purposes should +be natural. For it is the literary art +that you are set to study. When you +are asked to write your first freshman +essay, you are asked to turn life into +literature. Shakespeare did no more +than that. This single, exalted aim +should be yours: and you should remember +in your humblest writing Ruskin’s +definition of the artist. He is “a +person who has submitted in his work +to a law which was painful to obey, +that he may bestow by his work a delight +which it is gracious to bestow.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48'></a>48</span> +</p> +<p> +The literary art as practiced in college +goes by the excellent name “essay-writing”: +a comprehensive, modest, +dignified word. It gives you liberty +to write about anything; and if you +happen to have the literary instinct, +everything will present itself to you +as waiting to be written about. To +turn into words is the impulse of the +born writer, like Irving, or Emerson, +or Stevenson. There is probably one +such person in this company, possibly +there are two. But it is to the average +young essay-writer that I address +myself. +</p> +<p> +As to the matter of which you make +your essays, only let it be “the real +thing”: a piece of yourself, one of your +own interests. You have active minds, +or you would never be here: to you “the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49'></a>49</span> +world is so full of a number of things” +that subjects can never fail you. The +fact that you expect to write much during +your college life is stimulating to +your observation. You are “out after +ideas,” as a college girl expressed it. +You look and listen and read with an +eye on your next essay. Once set up a +subject in your mind, and it gathers +material as a magnet draws steel. +Everybody is conspiring to help you +with fresh points of view and apt +illustrations. You have heard of Madame +de Staël’s method: when preparing +to write, she gave a dinner-party +and led up the conversation of her +guests to the subject she had chosen. +Your essay will also require solitude +and brooding, long walks alone, and +possibly hours in the library. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50'></a>50</span> +</p> +<p> +When you begin to write, write +rapidly, even if you leave many gaps +and many crudities. You will then +have something to work upon. Moreover, +the mere act of writing is stimulating +to thought. <em>Movendo move</em>: +move by moving. By writing, write. +“I stared at the page an hour before +I had a thought,” says one miserable +young woman. Keep on looking at +your paper. Things will come to you, +you know not whence; but you must +prepare the way for them, by thinking +and feeling and dreaming, by reading +and listening and observing, with every +part of you alive and receptive. Then +wait for yourself patiently. +</p> +<p> +It is for most people unprofitable +to correct their work as they write, +because the productive state of mind +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51'></a>51</span> +and the critical state of mind are quite +apart. There should be the hot writing +and the cool writing. The fatal thing +is to cool off in the first writing: you +will soon be “grinding out” your +essay. When the time comes for the +critical re-writing, remember what +Schiller said, “By what he omits, +show me the artist.” There is a hard +saying, “Art is the rejection of the +almost right.” +</p> +<p> +Yet when you subject your work to +pitiless cutting, see that you do not +destroy its flow and rhythm. Look +carefully to the little connectives that +bind up the thought, words that are +only too rare in our English language. +The delicate <em>nuances</em> of meaning are +indicated and the harmony of the sentence +is preserved by the judicious +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52'></a>52</span> +placing of these little words. In revision +study to improve the diction. +Insert trial words each time that you +read your paper. Use every means to +enrich your vocabulary and to widen +your choice of words. Be able to run +your fingers over that loved instrument, +the English language, as a +musician lets his hands play over his +keys. +</p> +<p> +Precision in diction is the mark of +intellect, but also of patient labor. +Stevenson said the man not willing to +spend the whole afternoon in search +of the right word was unfit for the +business of literature. Be unsparing +of your time. The silliest boast is of +the short time a writer has spent upon +his work. Authors’ vanity is peculiarly +distasteful, because they are the people +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53'></a>53</span> +from whom one might expect more +intelligence. +</p> +<p> +The force, that is, the interest, of +your writing, will depend much on +the freshness of your choice of words, +and on the freshness of your phrasing. +Yet in the pursuit of freshness, beware +of affected or far-fetched words, +or words too old, as “gotten”; or too +new, as “viewpoint,” “foreword,” +words that, for mere ugliness, should +not be allowed to exist. +</p> +<p> +Write with words, not phrases. Commonplace +writing is composed of “bromidic” +phrases. They are very catching. +Excessive reading, unaccompanied +by thinking, is sure to produce a +stilted, conventional style. I wonder +if college girls know how often they +are, even in conversation, stilted in +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54'></a>54</span> +their language, though often with a +half-humorous intent. I have noticed +one who uses a Latin participial construction +even at the breakfast table. +</p> +<p> +In order to be vigorous, your writing +must be brief, simple, and clear. Yet +in our cult of simplicity, let us not +be content with the clear and simple +commonplace. Some books nowadays, +though written by the cleverest of +men, have a commonness of style that +is a mere coming down to their inferiors. +It will never make literature. +</p> +<p> +Put into your notebook what +writers have said about their craft. +You will find in Shakespeare some admirable +hints about his art, though +people often tell us he gave no account +of himself. Modern self-consciousness +has made authors more +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55'></a>55</span> +and more aware of themselves and +their processes. Mark what Goethe, +Emerson, and all our later writers +have said of their work. In my college +days, we read the old writers +upon these subjects: the incomparable +“Ars Poetica” of Horace, and the +pleasant pages of Quintilian. Do you +read them now? +</p> +<p> +How reading should help writing +is a question. I have heard it said +that a professional writer should read +some other more excellent writer one +hour a day! How far we should take +another writer for master is very +doubtful. Said a Michigan man to +Mr. Emerson, as he came out from a +lecture, “Mr. Emerson, I see you +never learned to write from a book.” +It goes without saying that we want +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56'></a>56</span> +only original, first-hand work from +our writer; nevertheless, it is true +that he may learn something about +his art from nearly every book he +reads. You yourselves are observing +readers; observe, among other things, +how the thing is done. +</p> +<p> +Beyond and out of college, the educated +woman should live pen in hand. +Power of expression is power itself, +and expression with the pen will add +much to a woman’s efficiency as a +member of society. With many business +careers opening to her, success +depends not a little on the ability to +write an admirable business letter. +Her usefulness as a secretary hangs on +the efficiency of her pen. A teacher’s +letter of application often settles her +fate. The librarian will introduce +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57'></a>57</span> +books to readers all the more effectively +if she hold the pen of the ready writer. +The college woman should be valuable +in many branches of journalism. In +philanthropic work, occasions arise for +wise, tactful, brief, effective composition, +in letters, reports, and public +addresses. The pen is not enough +used in preparation for speaking. We +should be spared many a rambling discourse +if the orator had first submitted +to its discipline. +</p> +<p> +The club paper has a place in many +women’s lives. Few of them take it +seriously enough. If they have possession +of an hour’s time of fifty +women, they should give their utmost +as an equivalent for fifty hours +of human life. To make her club paper +worth while, a woman should have +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58'></a>58</span> +lived pen in hand for a year, reading, +thinking, taking notes. The paper of +the educated woman should be reasoned, +ordered, and shapely, while +every sentence should have its meaning. +As John Synge said of a play: +“Every speech should be as fully +flavored as a nut or an apple.” This +is not the club paper of the lady who +rises with smiling apology, “I have +had very little time to prepare this +paper. I really did not begin to write +it until night before last.” +</p> +<p> +Whether women desire it or not, +they are destined to take more and +more part in public life, and whatever +they may be called upon to do, they +will find that “Have it in writing” is +one of the best maxims of the great +world they are entering. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59'></a>59</span> +</p> +<p> +I would, however, have you first +regard the use of the pen in letter-writing, +in preserving the unity and +love of the family, in cherishing friendship, +in sweetening human intercourse. +It makes society of solitude for the +lonely woman, or for the invalid, or for +the aged. Reading and writing together +are proof against loneliness. +</p> +<p> +By all means, use the pen as a means +of efficiency and of happiness, but I +would even cultivate writing for writing’s +sake. I would dabble in it as +an amateur! It is worth while to draw +and sketch for the training of the eye, +and for the greater appreciation of +others’ work. Write, and you will +be a far better reader. You help to +create a literary atmosphere in which +some one else can write better than +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60'></a>60</span> +without you, as musicians say that an +orchestra must have players in the audience. +Writers need the understanding +reader. We have not yet in our +country a large enough body of eager, +expectant readers, of literary sympathies. +Moreover, it seems a law of +Nature that, if many are writing and +keenly interested in literature, out of +such an environment a great writer is +sure in time to emerge. +</p> +<p> +By writing you may discover yourself. +The call may come to you, and +nothing then can stop you. You will +say, like Carlyle, “Had I but two +potatoes in the world and one true +idea, I should hold it my duty to part +with one potato for pen and ink, and +live upon the other till I got it written.” +</p> +<p> +The woman of letters is a type sure +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61'></a>61</span> +to develop from the present intellectual +training of women. Such a vocation +should not take her apart from the +great experiences of womanhood: these +should but make her the better writer. +Her career of writer will be a higher +education in itself, a steady intellectual +and moral development. I urge +you to write because it will hold you +to the ideal; it will develop the philosophic +mind; it will stimulate character +and intellect. It opens vistas of +happiness, as the practice of every art +does. To know the joys of the creative +artist one needs not to write a novel or +a drama. He can know them from a +letter, happily written, or even from +a fortunate phrase that has come to +him. +</p> +<p> +Whether or not such writing bring +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62'></a>62</span> +you fame and money, it will have given +you something no one can take away +from you. The modest person of a +quiet mind who does her best and +thinks not much about the consequences, +this person shares some of +the sweets of authorship with those +she knows to be her betters. The perquisites +of the writer are many: the +good society; the sympathy, sometimes +the love, of strangers; the mysterious +and fascinating communication +with one’s fellow-men. +</p> +<p> +People ask why college women have +not distinguished themselves in literature. +Colleges for women began as +our great literary period in America +was drawing to a close. If women +have not been notable in our literature +in the last fifty years, neither have +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63'></a>63</span> +we had another Emerson or Hawthorne. +American intellect has expressed +itself in other and wonderful +ways, but not in great poetry or prose. +</p> +<p> +Women have not yet had a long +enough trial of education to be adjusted +to the new conditions it has made for +them. They have had culture sufficient +to make them critical, but not creative; +to make them modest and distrustful of +their own work, but not greatly daring +in any art. They do small things delicately +and delightfully, but the great +works are still to come. Women need +more power to the elbow. They need +a richer tradition, and growth from a +deeper soil; for a writer oftenest ripens +through generations of readers and +thinkers. +</p> +<p> +Do not let this discourage you. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64'></a>64</span> +Each of us may in our day contribute +to the progress of American literature; +for we are helping to make the tastes +and traditions out of which in a later +generation a great poet may arise. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65'></a>65</span><a name='chIV' id='chIV'></a>IV—EVERYDAY LIVING</h2> +<p> +The freshman girl is happy who, in +her preparation for college, has included +some knowledge of the art of +living with others. Miss Ellen Emerson +once read aloud to our Sunday-School +class an essay by Sir Arthur +Helps on this very subject. One +sentence I remember: “A thorough +conviction of the difference of men is +the great thing to be assured of in +social knowledge: it is to life what +Newton’s law is to astronomy.” Miss +Ellen paused, and bade us not forget +that saying. The girl who goes to +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66'></a>66</span> +college prepared to find people “different” +has a mastery of the situation. +</p> +<p> +I would have assigned her, as a piece +of college preparation, a few good magazine +articles about the United States, +with three or four of the best new books +about her country. These would make +her glad to talk with a student from +Oregon on her right and a girl from +Boston on her left at that first homesick +supper-time. She is, perhaps, +a provincial New York City girl, who +has never seen anything but Europe +and her own town. Her horizon will +at once widen at college. +</p> +<p> +Not that open-mindedness requires +you to abandon your own beliefs. +College preparation should include +Convictions. Truth and honesty there +cannot be two opinions about; and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67'></a>67</span> +in the art of living with others truth +and honesty bear a great part. Said +Oliver Cromwell, “Give me a man that +hath principle—I know where to have +him.” +</p> +<p> +A girl should have had some preparation +in business habits for living +with others in college. Plain business +honesty is a “college requirement.” +Borrowing is, I fear, one of the sins of +student life. Girls of your breeding +do not borrow wearing apparel or +personal belongings. But a borrowed +postage stamp or a car-fare is a matter +of business honor. So is punctuality; +the robbery of other people’s time is +petty larceny. Integrity, uprightness, +enter into the art of living with others, +every hour of the day. The girl who is +scrupulously delicate about other persons’ rights and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68'></a>68</span> +possessions is the girl +you find easy to live with. +</p> +<p> +Teachableness is a charming quality +in a freshman, in or out of class: +a little wonder and awe become her. +A newcomer who “knows it all” +is unbearable. Meekness is an old-fashioned +virtue, not enough appreciated +in these days. Yet who does +not feel its charm in the unassuming +woman, ready to learn, and to reverence +superiority? +</p> +<p> +Prepare yourself to be at first of not +much importance, to be outshone in +recitation, to work hard without much +recognition; but you will find soon +that a teacher will grow to rely on you, +will meet your eye, will welcome your +response; and before you are aware, +you and she will have laid the foundation of a lifelong +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69'></a>69</span> +sympathy and friendship. +And, when all is said, the art +of living with others is the art of making +friends. +</p> +<p> +Do not forget your old friends. +When you travel abroad, one of the +most important subjects you learn +about is America; when you go to college, +you learn to know your home. +The first ache of homesickness will +teach you much. It would mean something +very sad if you did not feel it. +You would lose one of the tenderest +experiences. When the pain softens, +you find you understand your home +and your dear ones as you never did +before. That is the reward of the +freshman’s homesickness. +</p> +<p> +There will quickly come new interests, +but do not become so absorbed +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70'></a>70</span> +in them as to lose this new relation to +your home. Much as the friends there +miss you, your college life may be +made a constant pleasure to them. +Let us hope that your “preparatory +English” has made you a good letter-writer. +Write clearly and legibly, +with loving care, that your father may +not say, “Am I wasting a college education +on a girl that can’t even spell?” +and that your mother need not sigh, +“There is a word I shall have to give +up.” The illiteracy of collegians of +both sexes I know to be a source of +pain to parents who sit deciphering +their letters by the evening lamp. It +is all a question of your taking trouble, +and of your thoughtful consideration +for others. +</p> +<p> +Literacy attained, see that your +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71'></a>71</span> +letter gives pleasure, and that it share +with your parents the fun and interest +of your college life. See that it “make +old hearts young.” Don’t send home +a letter without a laugh in it. And +pray write occasionally to an uncle or +an aunt! +</p> +<p> +Do not drop your old acquaintance +when you go away from home. Perhaps +you have some humble village +friends, to whom it seems a fine, romantic +thing that you have “gone off +to college.” Every person whom you +know may be in some way pleased and +benefited by your experience. There +are little girls who are examining you +as only a little girl can, and are making +up their minds whether they, too, will +go to college some day. When you +see this bright child peering at you,—there +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72'></a>72</span> +is your chance to be something +adorable! +</p> +<p> +No one follows you with more sympathy +than the teachers who have +fitted you for college. They have a +share in you, remember; for teachers +have a reward beyond money in the +futures of their pupils. +</p> +<p> +We speak of college girls as if they +had departed for the cloister; but reckoning +by weeks, how large a proportion +of their time is spent at home! In +short vacations the unselfish mother +plans all sorts of pleasures for her +daughter, and perhaps says sadly at the +end, “I saw little of Ruth. She made +or received visits all the fortnight.” +The short vacations should, I think, +belong to your parents: the summer +gives time for other friends. Some +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_73'></a>73</span> +day you will understand what it has +cost your father and mother to send +you out of their sight just as you have +become most companionable to them. +</p> +<p> +In the case of some of you there are +sacrifices made at home that you may +go to college; and you will bravely +share with your parents the “doing +without” that is making your liberal +education possible. Your social position +in these next four years does not +depend on money: it does depend on +intellect and character; on taste, not +expense, in dress and belongings; and +on the traditions that you bring with +you. “To him that hath shall be +given.” The girl who takes something +to college gets more, as, when she +travels, she gains in proportion to what +she carries with her. For example, if +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74'></a>74</span> +you take to college the family tradition +of reading, your college lot is a happier +one. +</p> +<p> +The poor girl in college has certain +advantages: she is respected for the +effort she has made to get there; she +at once excites the interest of her +teachers; she finds herself in an atmosphere +of sympathy and encouragement. +She is generously praised, and is +made happy by the appreciation of her +gifts. Let her guard against vanity +and priggishness. The poor and brilliant +girl has her own temptations. +</p> +<p> +If she suffer in some things because +of her poverty, it does not matter +much. Privations, if they do not injure +health, are bracing and tonic. +A girl will learn at college, if anywhere, +how to be rich though poor. She could +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75'></a>75</span> +be placed in no situation where she +could more successfully ignore poverty. +Simplicity in dress is “good form” in +college. The fatal word “vulgar” is +fixed by the initiated upon display, or +extremes of fashion. Taste and neatness +are luxuries within the reach of +girls of small means. +</p> +<p> +The rich girl has her difficulties. +She is often handicapped by poor +preparation, which is not so much the +fault of her fitting school as of her +social life too soon begun. She has +had many distractions, with less serious +labor of preparation. College routine +will be at first irksome to her; but +if she has chosen to go to college, she +has stuff in her, and she can make of +herself the finest type of student. +Her money will be “means,” and she +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76'></a>76</span> +will learn noble ways of spending it. +Many is the rich girl who is secretly +helping a poor girl to get her education. +</p> +<p> +Rich appointments make a girl’s +way harder at college, on the whole. +Scholars are distrustful of the appearances +of wealth, sometimes unjustly. +The wise college girl will cultivate +simplicity, that she may be in harmony +with her surroundings, and that she +may have a free mind. +</p> +<p> +The girl of wealth may lack the element +of the heroic and the romantic +in the college career of the poor girl, +but her compensations are that she +can command all means of culture; she +can travel, buy books, visit cities, and +meet significant people. Her wealth +buys her a wider life; while the girl of +small means has one more concentrated and intense. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77'></a>77</span> +Her pleasures +may be keener because they are conquests; +she relies on herself and develops +her own resources. We will wait +to judge the two until they are forty. +</p> +<p> +Health is one of your “college +duties”; so is happiness. +</p> +<p> + “If I have faltered more or less<br /> + In my great task of happiness,”—<br /> +</p> +<p> +wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. He +was a master of gallant living. He +really had something to whine about, +but he lived with all his colors flying. +</p> +<p> +However, I shall not deny that there +are “blues” peculiar to college life. +Occasionally they will be part of your +education. There will be wounds to +your vanity; and years afterwards +you will remember the snub of some +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78'></a>78</span> +brusque, brilliant professor and will +smile to think how much you learned +by it. You will see another girl surpass +you, and envy will give you a +fit of the blues; for envy always punishes +itself. The college has, on the +whole, an atmosphere of noble feeling, +of “admiration, hope, and love”; but +a sin that some college girls have to +fight is the ugly sin of envy. Jealousy +is akin to it, and is sure to enter +into narrow, intense friendships. The +remedy is many friends and many +interests. +</p> +<p> +A genuine source of blues is disappointment +in one’s self. I wonder if +you will believe an old college girl’s +experience that an occasional bracing +failure is the best thing that can happen +to you. It will help you to keep your +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79'></a>79</span> +balance, and to know yourself. Moreover, +it will rouse you as nothing else +will. +</p> +<p> +Trifles loom large in college life, its +critics say. A freshman’s world looks +black to-day because of a bad recitation +or a neglectful friend. I do not +reason away her troubles: I only remind +her of Abraham Lincoln’s remedy +for the blues (and he knew well what +they were). “Remember,” he said, +“that they don’t <em>last</em>.” Also I would +set her to some absorbing task: “work +is good company,” and compels her +to think about what she is doing and +not of her troubles. +</p> +<p> +It was recorded upon the tomb of +a Roman lady long ago, “She made +nobody sad.” Make nobody sad with +your woes, or your face, or your voice. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80'></a>80</span> +And if you wish to cheer yourself, cheer +somebody else. You very likely need +rest for your nerves. College girls wear +upon themselves and upon one another +by too much talking. Their minds are +so mutually stimulating that they need +rest from their own company. One of +the first conditions for a satisfactory +intellectual life is a room to one’s self. +The college girl who cannot command +it should spend much time alone out +of doors, even if she carry with her +a book. +</p> +<p> +When the college day is ended, and +you look back over its hours, what will +have made its success, and what will +have made its happiness? Have you +been “nobly busy”? I leave to you +the answer. +</p> +<p> + <br /> + <br /> + <br /> +</p> +<div class='center'> +<p>The Riverside Press</p> +<p> </p> +<p>CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS</p> +<p>U . S . A</p> +</div> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Talks to Freshman Girls, by Helen Dawes Brown + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS *** + +***** This file should be named 37299-h.htm or 37299-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/2/9/37299/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from images made available by the HathiTrust +Digital Library.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Talks to Freshman Girls + +Author: Helen Dawes Brown + +Release Date: September 3, 2011 [EBook #37299] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from images made available by the HathiTrust +Digital Library.) + + + + + + + + + + By Helen Dawes Brown + + TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS. + + HOW PHOEBE FOUND HERSELF. + With frontispiece. + + ORPHANS. + + MR. TUCKERMAN'S NIECES. Illustrated. + + A BOOK OF LITTLE BOYS. Illustrated. + + THE PETRIE ESTATE. Also in paper binding. + + TWO COLLEGE GIRLS. + + LITTLE MISS PHOEBE GAY. Illustrated. + + HER SIXTEENTH YEAR. A Sequel to + "Little Miss Phoebe Gay." + + HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY + Boston and New York + + + + + TALKS TO + FRESHMAN GIRLS + + BY + + HELEN DAWES BROWN + + _Author of "Two College Girls"_ + + BOSTON AND NEW YORK + HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY + The Riverside Press Cambridge + 1914 + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HELEN DAWES BROWN + ALL RIGHTS RESERVED + _Published September 1914_ + + + + +TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS + + + + +I--"STUDIES SERVE FOR DELIGHT, FOR ORNAMENT, AND FOR ABILITY" + + +No man could have written this sentence with more authority than Francis +Bacon, for no man ever loved Studies better. In his youth he had +declared passionately that he took all knowledge for his province, and +it was his lifelong teaching that "the sovereignty of man lieth hid in +knowledge." + +"Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability." I imagine +Bacon writing these words with fervor, out of his own happy experience. +At the age of thirty-five, he could determine what Studies had been +worth to him. They had been his delight, his ornament, and the means to +his usefulness. + +For "delight" he wrote in his first edition "pastimes," as he wrote +"ornaments" and "abilities," then wisely changed his sentence. His +beautiful old word "delight" means, I take it, a heightened pleasure, a +pleasure touched with imagination, full of suggestion and invitation. + +I have a far glimpse of its meaning when I hear a young person say that +she is going to college "to have a good time"; a good time for the rest +of her life is what, I believe, Studies will secure to her. You are so +young, I may speak to you of age. There is a new old age for women, with +enlightened care of health and increasing intellectual interests. As for +you freshmen, I have a vision of your erect forms and of your bright +faces at seventy-five,--of your health and your gayety and your wisdom, +you charming old ladies of 1970! Age cannot wither you, nor custom stale +your infinite variety, you women whom Studies have served for delight. + +And you are so happy that I may speak to you of unhappiness. We need +three things to meet life with: a religion, an education, and a sense of +humor. The pursuit of Studies is a refuge as well as a delight. Studies +will fortify one to encounter loneliness, or ill-health, or losses of +any kind soever. The chances of life are such that I believe a woman +suffers from lack of an education more than a man does. He has a wider +world to draw from; she has need of more within herself. When Bacon +writes of the care of the body, he says that for our very health, we +should "entertain studies that fill the mind with splendid and +illustrious objects." + +In order that knowledge should be a delight, I submit that knowledge +should be remembered. A certain man George Eliot describes, who had a +sense of having had a liberal education until he tried to remember +something! The "culture" of some people seems to consist in having heard +a large number of proper names. "Oh, yes, I've _heard_ of him"--the rest +a blank. In our day, "mental training" has neglected the training of the +memory. I even urge a considerable amount of old-fashioned memorizing. +Lay up for yourselves treasure: possess for your own a sonnet of +Shakespeare, a poem of Wordsworth, a passage of Bacon. Lay up also a +good store of facts, such facts as will make the reading of the daily +paper profitable. There is no surer test of your outfit of information. +Shall we say that an educated person should be able to spell, pronounce, +and reasonably explain about two thousand proper nouns? + +When I dwell on the delight of Studies, I take no thought of ease. Let +us have no royal road to learning, but meet valiantly all the hardships +of the way. No girl of stamina is looking for "soft courses." I trust +that in your freshman year you are having just what Schiller meant when +he talked of "sport in art"; I hope you are having sport in education, +the spirited conquest of difficulty! Do you not feel the great adventure +of education, the romance of the quest of knowledge? + +You should know the keen delight of competition, not so much with one +another as with yourselves. The determination to equal yourself, to +surpass yourself, is a fine incitement. "Set before thee thine own +example," says Bacon again. + +On the other hand, you have not discovered all the delight of Studies +unless you have secured repose as well as excitement in your +intellectual life. It is "the world's sweet inn from pain and wearisome +turmoil." Only in quiet can you practice the abstraction and +concentration that give you power as a thinker. I dare to say that +education goes on with far too much chatter and sociability in all our +colleges. True enough, you are not getting the complete delight of your +studies unless you have the intellectual stimulus of companionship,--the +friendship "that maketh daylight in the understanding." (Bacon again!) +But you must have also the silence and the solitude in which to brood, +and in which to give your imagination its chance for flight. Have you +freshmen any long, dreaming twilights? Or have we all grown too busy--or +too frivolous--to pause "between the dark and the daylight"? Sane, +strong minds we want, but beautiful, poetic minds as well. The final +delight of education is in that culture of the imagination that makes an +idealist of every fine college girl. + +Bacon himself said of Studies, "Their chief use for delight is in +privateness and retiring." When he caused his essays to be translated +into Latin, to get them safely out of perishable English, delight was +there rendered "meditationum voluptas." That our twentieth-century girl +should know an harmonious, well-balanced life, I would see her +delighting in her joyous athletics, but acquiring also the _meditationum +voluptas_, for which Studies have furnished her mind. + +In my youth the word "ornament" was the word of dread in education. We +earliest college girls scoffed at "accomplishments." Ornament stood to +us for all that was smattering and frivolous in education. _We_ were of +the new order! + +Since the day when ornament was the bugbear of woman's education, we +have grown somewhat wiser. "Studies should serve for delight and for +ornament," we now say gladly; education should make you a delight to +yourself and it should make you a delight to other people. Said Poor +Richard: "Hast thou virtue? Acquire also the graces and beauties of +virtue." "Hast thou education? Acquire also the graces and beauties of +education. Your common sense will save you from pedantry." You will not +"make your knowledge a discomfort to your families," as Mr. Taft once +gently expressed it in talking to college girls. + +Shall ornament mean "accomplishments"? Why not? If I were you, I would +do some one interesting, amusing, agreeable thing so well as to make a +small art of it. Have some accomplishment that will render you +interesting in your own home, entertaining to children and to +grandmothers, and that will make you welcome in your own set. + +I take ornament as including all the externals of education, and I ask, +where does education show on the outside? One of its most exposed points +is the letter that a woman writes. "A good address," in the +old-fashioned phrase, is about the most valuable of worldly possessions. +It should include a good address--a good manner and presence--upon +paper. As for the letter, all your education leads up to it: its +clearness, brevity, point, and grace. "Good sense brightly delivered," +should describe a college girl's letter as well as one by Lady Mary +Wortley Montagu. + +In Bacon's opinion, the chief ornament bestowed by Studies was that of +conversation (_orationis ornamentum_). In the matter and manner of +discourse, education achieves its utmost. It tells upon conversation in +obvious ways. Studies furnish the mind with matter worth talking about, +and they give an appetite for ideas. It may be hoped that they give the +sense of proportion in conversation, and prevent the educated woman from +ever becoming that object of dread, "a talker." Most American women talk +too much, perhaps because they are so bright, and think of so many +things to say! One hears the criticism: "She is a brilliant woman; she +talks well; but she doesn't give the other person a chance." Does this +pauseless talker forget what a delight is the educated listener, quick, +responsive, eager for the other's thought? One of the finest ornaments +education can bestow is the social grace of good listening. + +Alas that it so often fails to bestow the ornament of good speech! The +failure of the colleges in this matter is lamentable. Its importance is +not brought home to individuals with sufficient severity. They are left +in their carelessness and laziness, with the social stigma of bad speech +upon them for life. The colleges should help to make ladies and +gentlemen as well as scholars. "What a bright girl!" said the woman who +sat next a college freshman at dinner, "but can the college do nothing +to cure her abominable speech?" + +I believe that whatever his early associations, the speech of an +educated person lies within his choice. If he be a person of will, and +of the right energy and ambition, he can conquer provincialism or +inherited faults of speech. It means _caring_ and _trying_. It takes +character, in short. One of the best instances of achievement of +cultivated speech is that of George Eliot, who by birth would have +spoken a rich dialect. + +Perhaps the subtlest ornament that education may confer is that which we +call distinction. After the refining process of the four years in close +association with noble things, "commonness" ought to be impossible. The +beginning of distinction is simplicity and sincerity, all absence of +affectation, pedantry, or the desire to make an impression. Education is +an immense simplifier; it does away with so many unnecessary pretences. + +Bacon sent a copy of the "Advancement of Learning" to a man whom he +addressed thus: "Since you are one that was excellently bred in all +learning, which I have ever noted to shine in all your speeches and +behaviors." Such is Bacon's way of saying, "Abeunt studia in mores." +Educated perceptions and a quickened imagination should make for +intelligence in conduct, and for beauty in all human relations. The +reasonableness of goodness appeals to one's intellect, while, on the +other hand, one must have character to make his intellect tell. + +When they praised Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond, the great lady of +her time, they said of her, "Every one that knew her loved her, and +everything that she said or did became her." That is the woman of +distinction, whether countess or college girl. "Every one that knew her +loved her." Distinction is of a poor, cold quality which has not +sympathy for its final charm. + +If Studies give us delight within ourselves, and add to us, we fondly +hope, such ornament without, what more may we expect from them? They fit +us to take our share in the day's work. Studies serve us for ability. +Says Kipling, "Knowledge gives us control of life, as the fish controls +the water he swims in." The utilitarian view of education is very well, +if kept in its proper place; but education, we all know, is for the +making of a life as well as of a living. Some mothers used to say, "But +my daughter isn't going to support herself; why should she go to +college?" "For delight, for ornament, madam"; and I would add, "for +ability and usefulness in any sphere whatever." + +Bacon's exposition of his own text shows that he means by "ability" much +what our New England aunts meant by "judgment." He says education is of +use in "the plotting and marshalling of affairs." How does this planning +and organizing go on? How does business move? By constant wise +decisions. Good judgment, you say, is a matter of inborn common sense, +and you don't get common sense by going to college. I am not so sure of +that, though I grant it is better to inherit it from a grandmother. But +certainly you are learning all the time at college "sense of +proportion," "the fitness of things," "sweet reasonableness," which come +near to being names for refined common sense. + +Life is lived by innumerable decisions, great and small; and a person's +happiness and success will depend much on making these decisions +quickly, firmly, and wisely. The helpfulness and comfort that a woman +may give to others will consist more in her love and wisdom than in any +material benefits she may be able to confer. + +One field for the ability of the educated woman of our day is the making +of a good home on a small income. She is the woman who will not, +consciously or unconsciously, goad her husband to money-making. I should +like a fresh sermon preached upon the text, "Blessed are the +peacemakers." This time it should be of those blessed peacemakers who +create the harmony, calm, and love of a happy home. That is the great +task, the first task of women. + +She has no doubt her civic duties, and again her education puts the edge +on her abilities: she is a more valuable helper in the world's work. She +may be a bread-winner, for herself and for others; and herein, perhaps, +is the most simple and popular argument for a woman's pursuit of +Studies, one so self-evident that I need not dwell upon it. + +I have been speaking of an ideal education and of an ideal woman, but +where should we consider them both if not in this very place? A college +like yours aims at nothing less! + + + + +II--REAL READERS + + +"Do we make real readers of our students?" was the anxious question of a +college president. I remembered his phrase when I read his annual +report. "Most of these young people," he said, "are to go out into +ordinary life, into general pursuits, where the one chance of their +maintaining their intellectual growth will come through stimulating them +in these years to interest in some particular line which they may +continue, in the midst of the general pressure of social, domestic, or +professional life. Unless a student learn to read and love books, she +will, in a large majority of cases, be thrown out of all relation to +resources that are in any fair sense of the word intellectual." He +pleaded that to make a girl a real reader is to safeguard her +intellectual life. + +A student leaves college, not perhaps having read much, but knowing what +she wants to read. Her education has been an appetizer; now she is +invited to partake of the banquet. + + "May good digestion wait on appetite, + And health on both." + +The hunger for books no doubt began with many of you as soon as you had +learned your alphabet. It was very likely hereditary. Indeed, the ideal +way to become a lover of books is to be, like Mary Lamb, "tumbled at an +early age into a spacious closet of good old English reading." Fortunate +for you, if you have had a grandfather who reluctantly puts off his +reading-glasses as dinner is announced, or a grandmother who hides a +book in her work-basket. For the real reader has a book close by; he +does not walk across the room for it. If your busy father and mother +still find time to read a new book and talk about it, then you and your +brother Dick will be readers, and you will never know why. Reading is +the most catching thing in the world. When school and college shall have +added their stimulus, the prospect is good for a "full-blooded reader." + +If a girl should not come out of a reading home, it may be hoped that +she will fall into the hands of a book-loving teacher. There are two +women in the American town who are to be envied for their opportunity: +one is the teacher of "Literature" in the High School, and the other is +the librarian of the Public Library. Both may say, in words of the +Oriental proverb, "I will make thee to love literature, thy mother; I +will make its beauties to pass before thee." + +"Greedy of books,"--so Petrarch described himself; and he himself was +the first great reader of modern times. I like these metaphors of the +body applied to reading. The books that feed the mind, the nourishing +books, are they not the ones that last and live? The hunger for books +has its rhythm like the hunger for meat. Observe that the real reader +reads regularly,--he has to. The regularity is unconscious: a healthy +appetite does not keep one eye on the clock. The healthy reader feels +faint and hollow for lack of nourishment: he seeks a book and he is +content. + +He reads from the simplest motives: in fact, he is a rather +irresponsible person. He reads for the sense of life: he eats to live, +he reads to live. He is not fiercely following up a subject; he is not +pursuing references. That is another field of reading, which has its +necessary and stimulating part in the intellectual life. Reading to +order is indispensable to a student's work; but the fear is, lest +"reading up" may leave no time for reading. "I get no time to read," is +about the most disheartening thing I hear from college boys and girls. A +university librarian said the other day that in their freshman year, +students drew books from the library for general reading, but after that +year no student entered the library unless obliged to. I found a high +school boy working out a problem about pressures and resistances; he +looked up gleefully, "This isn't for _school_; this is for myself!" It +is reading for yourself, reading for fun, that I am pleading for. + +Yet you, too, say that there is no time in college for reading. I assure +you there is a great deal more time than you think there is. What are +the things that you might just as well _not_ have done to-day? One of +the busiest of men, Matthew Arnold, wrote: "The plea that this or that +man has no time for culture will vanish as soon as we desire culture so +much that we begin to examine seriously our present use of our time. +Give to any man all the time that he now wastes, on useless business, +wearisome or deteriorating amusements, trivial letter-writing, random +reading, and he will have plenty of time for culture. Some of us waste +all our time, most of us waste much of it, but all of us waste some." + +Culture was in my youth a word to conjure with. Somehow of late it has +become separated from education and almost opposed to it. Culture is +suspected by one of being dilettante, by another, of being selfish. Let +us have a reconciliation of education and culture, and see that they go +on together. + +The real reader is active, not passive. There are people who look upon a +book as that which best brings on an afternoon nap: something for the +dull hours of the day, to quiet one's nerves, "to take one's mind off." +Much writing does appear to have been done for tired people. Real +reading, however, is not a stop-gap. We should take up a book while the +mind has a good grip and can do its part. + +As you who are city-bred ride from end to end of this country, through +prairie villages, mountain hamlets, valley towns, you wonder what makes +these out-of-the-world places habitable. But I assure you, that prairie +town is not so dead a level as it looks, for there is a woman's club, +and there is a public library, and there are young people going to +college. It is books that make such places habitable. + +The real reader is fortified against solitude, even that worst of +solitudes, a company in which he dare not speak of a book. Books prepare +you to live in strange places, as often falls to the lot of the American +woman. You may marry a missionary or an army officer; you may go to the +Klondike or the Philippines. "You could set that woman down anywhere," +said a mourning widower, in praise of his departed wife. You can set the +real reader down anywhere. For one small matter, it is something to be +made independent of weather! + +The reader, grown old, has youth at his beck and can forget the passage +of years. Place is no more to him than time; he is master of his fate. +Reading, also, is "the poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release." + +Our reader is patient; he will put up with a good deal from his +author,--as for instance, when he reads Meredith or Browning. He is +patient of dullness as well as of eccentricity. Lowell's "dogged +reading" has to go to the ripened experience of the trained reader: it +is required of him that he do a certain amount of unprofitable reading +in the forming of his critical judgment. + +He must be patient and he must be calm. Quick and complete absorption is +the mark of the happy reader. He is sincere and he is modest; his +reading is not for show. + +Common sense tells the reader when and where he may talk about books. +Happy the family that read the same books: happier still the family that +can talk about them! Love of reading is the best safeguard against +gossip, and against excessive talking. One woman of your acquaintance +fills every gap with talk; another fills the pauses of the day with +reading. + +In this country that boasts no class distinctions, we, nevertheless, +have a class at the very top: the privileged caste of readers. What a +freemasonry there is among them! They "speak the same language"; they +toss about allusions; they dare to quote to one another; they take +worlds for granted. But if you belong to this aristocracy, beware of +snobbishness. The snobbishness of culture is the most contemptible of +all, for culture knows better. The other "snobbishness" is based on pure +ignorance of the true values of life, and has so far excuse. + +People of moderate means probably make the best readers, because they +have the largest share of rational leisure. The very poor and the very +rich know not leisure, and its graces and benefactions. "Give me neither +poverty nor riches"--such would be the best condition for the +intellectual life. Miss Jeannette Gilder once drew a pleasant picture: +as she passed along a Boston street of a winter evening, she noted the +friendly custom of leaving up the window shades, and letting the light +and cheer of the home shine forth upon the wayfarer. But to her New York +eyes it was a striking fact that these Boston families sat reading by +the evening lamp; that appeared to be their regular nightly occupation. +She carried away the feeling that the good old Boston of Emerson and +Lowell and Longfellow was not altogether vanished. + +A bookless home! Was ever such suggestion of dreariness! The reader, if +he own anything, will own some books. They need not be many. Some of the +greatest readers have had but a modest number. Those few volumes go far +to furnish your home. No wall covering is so rich. When the western +light strikes across your bookshelves,--and no library should be without +its western window,--the blended colors of those goodly volumes convey +the charm of even the outside of literature. I like Montaigne's way of +saying, "As soon as I was able, I hired a spacious house in the city, +for myself and books; where I again, with rapture, resumed my literary +pursuits." "A house for myself and books!" + +No; your books need not be many. They will be more to you if you have +made sacrifices for their sake,--as Charles Lamb did in the days when +his purchase was not merely a purchase, but nothing short of a victory. +If you own but few books, you will know the pleasures of re-reading. You +will find the second reading fixes a book, gives you its essence and its +true proportions. Yet it is rather the intimacies and friendships among +books re-read that I have in mind, when they become all interwoven with +endearing memories and associations. Every ten years you become a wiser +reader and turn a new light upon your author. I imagine three tests of a +book: do you read it aloud?--do you give it away?--but above all, do you +read it a second time? + +Your reading should have much variety, ranging from the newspapers to +the great poets. Of course we must know what the great world is about +and must live in our own age; but the little world of the newspapers let +us waste no time upon. Said Matthew Arnold again: "Reading a good book +is a discipline such as no reading of even good newspapers can ever +give." Scrappy reading makes scrappy minds, for it destroys power of +attention. + +I believe that there should be a backbone of History throughout your +lifetime of reading. Be sure to choose first-rate historical books; +never waste yourself upon second-rate histories. Biography, I am aware, +is middle-aged reading; and I can only promise you immense pleasure from +it when you are past forty. Those large, heavy volumes in dull bindings, +which did not invite your youth, will become alive and significant, and +full of good society. + +I have never a seen college girl who did not enjoy reading essays, +whatever her sentiment about writing them. Essays, too, are good +society, the companionship of fine minds giving you their best. This +literary form, with its modest, careless name, has yet the widest range +in all literature. Nothing human is alien to it. If you read "for the +sense of life," a good essay will give you precisely that. + +Books of travel are especially good to read after you have traveled. One +glimpse of the Old World, for example, gives you the clue, the key, +which makes books and pictures intelligible to the imagination ever +after. When once you have this clue, you can read far beyond your own +travels. And while you are on the road, do a little reading day by +day,--Henry James's "Little Tour in France" while you are making that +very tour; Hawthorne's "Our Old Home," while you, too, are in England. +In foreign lands read a newspaper of the country, and read a novel by +its best writer of fiction. + +Said that fine old novel-reader, Professor Jowett, of Baliol, when he +was writing to a young lady, "Have you thoroughly made yourself up in +Miss Austen and the 'Vicar of Wakefield'? No person is educated who +doesn't know them." Good fiction educates not only the intellect but the +heart. It enriches the imagination and the sympathies, and "teaches us +to walk not by sight but by insight." This is fiction fair, and with +fiction foul, why should we concern ourselves? + +"Who reads poetry nowadays?" people are asking miserably. My real +reader, I answer with confidence. He must have poetry, and why he must, +Richard Crashaw's friend said once for all in the quaint preface to the +poet's verses: "Maist thou take a poem hence and tune thy soul by it +into a heavenly pitch." + +Another old writer once described the four classes of readers: "Sponges +which attract all without distinguishing; hour-glasses which receive and +pour out as fast; bags which only retain the dregs, and let the wine +escape; and sieves which retain the best only." I am now, of course, +addressing the sieves. Real readers need not take high moral ground +about trash; they are simply bored by it. A publisher said the other day +that he must publish a certain amount of trash in order to be able to +publish some good books. He needs a body of better readers. Mediocre +readers make mediocre books. + +Superior people, however, are often disloyal to their own standards. You +are, for example, untrue to yourself, if you sit at a theater +assisting--admirable French word!--at a play that your whole soul +rejects. It is like a breach of faith to read a book which is moral +trash or literary trash. No mind is safe from the suggestion of such +plays or such books. Said Fielding, "We are as liable to be corrupted by +books as by companions." Happily it is just as true that we are as +liable to be purified by books as by companions. + +To be quite fair, we must acknowledge some dangers of reading. You +remember Kipling's bank clerk, who in a previous incarnation had been a +Viking, and who might have written tales as good as Kipling's own had he +not been so steeped in English literature. I have known people who had +plainly been dulled by over-reading: they were the "sponges" of our old +writer. Over every book we should think at least as long a time as we +spend in the reading. I notice the real reader frequently looks up and +off from his book, to think the better. + +Ask from your book not only ideas, but style. Careless readers have +permitted slipshod books. The writer says to himself, "This is quite +good enough for the people who are likely to read it." He is fond of the +simile of the pearls and the swine, confident that it is the swine who +have thwarted his genius. Real readers help to make real writers. + +Who are some of the real readers we have known? There is Chaucer's Clerk +of Oxenford. He owned books, poor as he was; he kept them at the head of +his bed; and there you have two unfailing marks of the real reader. (I +even like that dash of color,--the "black or red" of his bindings; for +the real reader loves the outside of his book as well.) + +I think of Milton, who made the most beautiful definition of a book I +know--"the precious life-blood of a master spirit, treasured up on +purpose to a Life beyond Life." None but a real reader could have so +nobly imagined the book and its author. + +When Keats read Chapman's Homer and said that a new planet swam into his +ken, he expressed for all readers the sense of surprise, of discovery, +and of acquisition when they have found a real book. + +Into this noble fellowship you and I are allowed to enter, as we leave +our college. + + + + +III--THE USE OF THE PEN + + +Says the census-taker once in ten years, "Can you write English?" We are +a bit startled by the question: "_Can_ we?" we ask ourselves humbly. It +is the question I ask you freshmen. + +The educated person has the implements of writing at hand and in order: +his inkstand is filled and his pen does not scratch. The uneducated man +searches for a penholder, and keeps the ink-bottle on the top shelf; and +the difference signifies much in the lives of the two people. + +You live pen in hand during your four years in college. You acquire the +useful art of note-taking,--by itself no mean intellectual exercise. The +untrained note-taker brings from a lecture a rare muddle of senseless, +half-caught remarks. But a good mind soon shows itself in its taking of +"points" and getting them quickly to paper. And who does not know that +"a note taken on the spot is worth a cartload of recollections"? + +That a notebook should be attractive and convenient for reference is its +_raison d'etre_. One secret of comfort in notebooks is variety in +covers, that there may be no exasperating searches for the right one. +"Buy only good-looking notebooks," sounds like frivolous advice; but it +is in the interests of scholarship that your notebooks should have an +honorable place on your bookshelves. I would make a handsome page, with +wide margins, large type, generous spacing. Paragraph freely, and drop a +line often. Underline profusely, that you may catch the meaning quickly, +and preserve the emphasis of the lecturer. Use parentheses, brackets, +numerals, letters, and thus organize your matter as you go along and +make it easy to glance at. Have divisions or pigeonholes at the back of +your book, where you can put away and classify all sorts of memoranda. + +With these mechanical devices, the use of the pen becomes the easier. It +will be able to shape sentences on the wing, and capture the thought and +much of the language of a lecturer in full flight. It is a strenuous +exercise, and good mental athletics. + +Yet for all education to be carried on in this way would not be well. +There should be variety in the conduct of classes. That comes of itself, +through the varied personality of teachers. The next man may make of his +hour a quiz. Does anything remain of a quiz that can be written down? A +good exercise for the pen to shape something out of the flying questions +and answers! + +You live pen in hand in the classroom, and also in the preparation of +your work. Note-taking in a library is a fine process in education. +Unless your book is a masterpiece of style, paraphrase and condense for +your notebook. Add your own thoughts, in brackets. A book thus read is +twice yours. I would date every piece of note-taking; for the +autobiography of your mind is writing itself. + +In these college exercises your pen has acquired practice, and to turn +it next to use for artistic purposes should be natural. For it is the +literary art that you are set to study. When you are asked to write your +first freshman essay, you are asked to turn life into literature. +Shakespeare did no more than that. This single, exalted aim should be +yours: and you should remember in your humblest writing Ruskin's +definition of the artist. He is "a person who has submitted in his work +to a law which was painful to obey, that he may bestow by his work a +delight which it is gracious to bestow." + +The literary art as practiced in college goes by the excellent name +"essay-writing": a comprehensive, modest, dignified word. It gives you +liberty to write about anything; and if you happen to have the literary +instinct, everything will present itself to you as waiting to be written +about. To turn into words is the impulse of the born writer, like +Irving, or Emerson, or Stevenson. There is probably one such person in +this company, possibly there are two. But it is to the average young +essay-writer that I address myself. + +As to the matter of which you make your essays, only let it be "the real +thing": a piece of yourself, one of your own interests. You have active +minds, or you would never be here: to you "the world is so full of a +number of things" that subjects can never fail you. The fact that you +expect to write much during your college life is stimulating to your +observation. You are "out after ideas," as a college girl expressed it. +You look and listen and read with an eye on your next essay. Once set up +a subject in your mind, and it gathers material as a magnet draws steel. +Everybody is conspiring to help you with fresh points of view and apt +illustrations. You have heard of Madame de Stael's method: when +preparing to write, she gave a dinner-party and led up the conversation +of her guests to the subject she had chosen. Your essay will also +require solitude and brooding, long walks alone, and possibly hours in +the library. + +When you begin to write, write rapidly, even if you leave many gaps and +many crudities. You will then have something to work upon. Moreover, the +mere act of writing is stimulating to thought. _Movendo move_: move by +moving. By writing, write. "I stared at the page an hour before I had a +thought," says one miserable young woman. Keep on looking at your paper. +Things will come to you, you know not whence; but you must prepare the +way for them, by thinking and feeling and dreaming, by reading and +listening and observing, with every part of you alive and receptive. +Then wait for yourself patiently. + +It is for most people unprofitable to correct their work as they write, +because the productive state of mind and the critical state of mind are +quite apart. There should be the hot writing and the cool writing. The +fatal thing is to cool off in the first writing: you will soon be +"grinding out" your essay. When the time comes for the critical +re-writing, remember what Schiller said, "By what he omits, show me the +artist." There is a hard saying, "Art is the rejection of the almost +right." + +Yet when you subject your work to pitiless cutting, see that you do not +destroy its flow and rhythm. Look carefully to the little connectives +that bind up the thought, words that are only too rare in our English +language. The delicate _nuances_ of meaning are indicated and the +harmony of the sentence is preserved by the judicious placing of these +little words. In revision study to improve the diction. Insert trial +words each time that you read your paper. Use every means to enrich your +vocabulary and to widen your choice of words. Be able to run your +fingers over that loved instrument, the English language, as a musician +lets his hands play over his keys. + +Precision in diction is the mark of intellect, but also of patient +labor. Stevenson said the man not willing to spend the whole afternoon +in search of the right word was unfit for the business of literature. Be +unsparing of your time. The silliest boast is of the short time a writer +has spent upon his work. Authors' vanity is peculiarly distasteful, +because they are the people from whom one might expect more +intelligence. + +The force, that is, the interest, of your writing, will depend much on +the freshness of your choice of words, and on the freshness of your +phrasing. Yet in the pursuit of freshness, beware of affected or +far-fetched words, or words too old, as "gotten"; or too new, as +"viewpoint," "foreword," words that, for mere ugliness, should not be +allowed to exist. + +Write with words, not phrases. Commonplace writing is composed of +"bromidic" phrases. They are very catching. Excessive reading, +unaccompanied by thinking, is sure to produce a stilted, conventional +style. I wonder if college girls know how often they are, even in +conversation, stilted in their language, though often with a +half-humorous intent. I have noticed one who uses a Latin participial +construction even at the breakfast table. + +In order to be vigorous, your writing must be brief, simple, and clear. +Yet in our cult of simplicity, let us not be content with the clear and +simple commonplace. Some books nowadays, though written by the cleverest +of men, have a commonness of style that is a mere coming down to their +inferiors. It will never make literature. + +Put into your notebook what writers have said about their craft. You +will find in Shakespeare some admirable hints about his art, though +people often tell us he gave no account of himself. Modern +self-consciousness has made authors more and more aware of themselves +and their processes. Mark what Goethe, Emerson, and all our later +writers have said of their work. In my college days, we read the old +writers upon these subjects: the incomparable "Ars Poetica" of Horace, +and the pleasant pages of Quintilian. Do you read them now? + +How reading should help writing is a question. I have heard it said that +a professional writer should read some other more excellent writer one +hour a day! How far we should take another writer for master is very +doubtful. Said a Michigan man to Mr. Emerson, as he came out from a +lecture, "Mr. Emerson, I see you never learned to write from a book." It +goes without saying that we want only original, first-hand work from our +writer; nevertheless, it is true that he may learn something about his +art from nearly every book he reads. You yourselves are observing +readers; observe, among other things, how the thing is done. + +Beyond and out of college, the educated woman should live pen in hand. +Power of expression is power itself, and expression with the pen will +add much to a woman's efficiency as a member of society. With many +business careers opening to her, success depends not a little on the +ability to write an admirable business letter. Her usefulness as a +secretary hangs on the efficiency of her pen. A teacher's letter of +application often settles her fate. The librarian will introduce books +to readers all the more effectively if she hold the pen of the ready +writer. The college woman should be valuable in many branches of +journalism. In philanthropic work, occasions arise for wise, tactful, +brief, effective composition, in letters, reports, and public addresses. +The pen is not enough used in preparation for speaking. We should be +spared many a rambling discourse if the orator had first submitted to +its discipline. + +The club paper has a place in many women's lives. Few of them take it +seriously enough. If they have possession of an hour's time of fifty +women, they should give their utmost as an equivalent for fifty hours of +human life. To make her club paper worth while, a woman should have +lived pen in hand for a year, reading, thinking, taking notes. The paper +of the educated woman should be reasoned, ordered, and shapely, while +every sentence should have its meaning. As John Synge said of a play: +"Every speech should be as fully flavored as a nut or an apple." This is +not the club paper of the lady who rises with smiling apology, "I have +had very little time to prepare this paper. I really did not begin to +write it until night before last." + +Whether women desire it or not, they are destined to take more and more +part in public life, and whatever they may be called upon to do, they +will find that "Have it in writing" is one of the best maxims of the +great world they are entering. + +I would, however, have you first regard the use of the pen in +letter-writing, in preserving the unity and love of the family, in +cherishing friendship, in sweetening human intercourse. It makes society +of solitude for the lonely woman, or for the invalid, or for the aged. +Reading and writing together are proof against loneliness. + +By all means, use the pen as a means of efficiency and of happiness, but +I would even cultivate writing for writing's sake. I would dabble in it +as an amateur! It is worth while to draw and sketch for the training of +the eye, and for the greater appreciation of others' work. Write, and +you will be a far better reader. You help to create a literary +atmosphere in which some one else can write better than without you, as +musicians say that an orchestra must have players in the audience. +Writers need the understanding reader. We have not yet in our country a +large enough body of eager, expectant readers, of literary sympathies. +Moreover, it seems a law of Nature that, if many are writing and keenly +interested in literature, out of such an environment a great writer is +sure in time to emerge. + +By writing you may discover yourself. The call may come to you, and +nothing then can stop you. You will say, like Carlyle, "Had I but two +potatoes in the world and one true idea, I should hold it my duty to +part with one potato for pen and ink, and live upon the other till I got +it written." + +The woman of letters is a type sure to develop from the present +intellectual training of women. Such a vocation should not take her +apart from the great experiences of womanhood: these should but make her +the better writer. Her career of writer will be a higher education in +itself, a steady intellectual and moral development. I urge you to write +because it will hold you to the ideal; it will develop the philosophic +mind; it will stimulate character and intellect. It opens vistas of +happiness, as the practice of every art does. To know the joys of the +creative artist one needs not to write a novel or a drama. He can know +them from a letter, happily written, or even from a fortunate phrase +that has come to him. + +Whether or not such writing bring you fame and money, it will have given +you something no one can take away from you. The modest person of a +quiet mind who does her best and thinks not much about the consequences, +this person shares some of the sweets of authorship with those she knows +to be her betters. The perquisites of the writer are many: the good +society; the sympathy, sometimes the love, of strangers; the mysterious +and fascinating communication with one's fellow-men. + +People ask why college women have not distinguished themselves in +literature. Colleges for women began as our great literary period in +America was drawing to a close. If women have not been notable in our +literature in the last fifty years, neither have we had another Emerson +or Hawthorne. American intellect has expressed itself in other and +wonderful ways, but not in great poetry or prose. + +Women have not yet had a long enough trial of education to be adjusted +to the new conditions it has made for them. They have had culture +sufficient to make them critical, but not creative; to make them modest +and distrustful of their own work, but not greatly daring in any art. +They do small things delicately and delightfully, but the great works +are still to come. Women need more power to the elbow. They need a +richer tradition, and growth from a deeper soil; for a writer oftenest +ripens through generations of readers and thinkers. + +Do not let this discourage you. Each of us may in our day contribute to +the progress of American literature; for we are helping to make the +tastes and traditions out of which in a later generation a great poet +may arise. + + + + +IV--EVERYDAY LIVING + + +The freshman girl is happy who, in her preparation for college, has +included some knowledge of the art of living with others. Miss Ellen +Emerson once read aloud to our Sunday-School class an essay by Sir +Arthur Helps on this very subject. One sentence I remember: "A thorough +conviction of the difference of men is the great thing to be assured of +in social knowledge: it is to life what Newton's law is to astronomy." +Miss Ellen paused, and bade us not forget that saying. The girl who goes +to college prepared to find people "different" has a mastery of the +situation. + +I would have assigned her, as a piece of college preparation, a few good +magazine articles about the United States, with three or four of the +best new books about her country. These would make her glad to talk with +a student from Oregon on her right and a girl from Boston on her left at +that first homesick supper-time. She is, perhaps, a provincial New York +City girl, who has never seen anything but Europe and her own town. Her +horizon will at once widen at college. + +Not that open-mindedness requires you to abandon your own beliefs. +College preparation should include Convictions. Truth and honesty there +cannot be two opinions about; and in the art of living with others truth +and honesty bear a great part. Said Oliver Cromwell, "Give me a man that +hath principle--I know where to have him." + +A girl should have had some preparation in business habits for living +with others in college. Plain business honesty is a "college +requirement." Borrowing is, I fear, one of the sins of student life. +Girls of your breeding do not borrow wearing apparel or personal +belongings. But a borrowed postage stamp or a car-fare is a matter of +business honor. So is punctuality; the robbery of other people's time is +petty larceny. Integrity, uprightness, enter into the art of living with +others, every hour of the day. The girl who is scrupulously delicate +about other persons' rights and possessions is the girl you find easy to +live with. + +Teachableness is a charming quality in a freshman, in or out of class: a +little wonder and awe become her. A newcomer who "knows it all" is +unbearable. Meekness is an old-fashioned virtue, not enough appreciated +in these days. Yet who does not feel its charm in the unassuming woman, +ready to learn, and to reverence superiority? + +Prepare yourself to be at first of not much importance, to be outshone +in recitation, to work hard without much recognition; but you will find +soon that a teacher will grow to rely on you, will meet your eye, will +welcome your response; and before you are aware, you and she will have +laid the foundation of a lifelong sympathy and friendship. And, when all +is said, the art of living with others is the art of making friends. + +Do not forget your old friends. When you travel abroad, one of the most +important subjects you learn about is America; when you go to college, +you learn to know your home. The first ache of homesickness will teach +you much. It would mean something very sad if you did not feel it. You +would lose one of the tenderest experiences. When the pain softens, you +find you understand your home and your dear ones as you never did +before. That is the reward of the freshman's homesickness. + +There will quickly come new interests, but do not become so absorbed in +them as to lose this new relation to your home. Much as the friends +there miss you, your college life may be made a constant pleasure to +them. Let us hope that your "preparatory English" has made you a good +letter-writer. Write clearly and legibly, with loving care, that your +father may not say, "Am I wasting a college education on a girl that +can't even spell?" and that your mother need not sigh, "There is a word +I shall have to give up." The illiteracy of collegians of both sexes I +know to be a source of pain to parents who sit deciphering their letters +by the evening lamp. It is all a question of your taking trouble, and of +your thoughtful consideration for others. + +Literacy attained, see that your letter gives pleasure, and that it +share with your parents the fun and interest of your college life. See +that it "make old hearts young." Don't send home a letter without a +laugh in it. And pray write occasionally to an uncle or an aunt! + +Do not drop your old acquaintance when you go away from home. Perhaps +you have some humble village friends, to whom it seems a fine, romantic +thing that you have "gone off to college." Every person whom you know +may be in some way pleased and benefited by your experience. There are +little girls who are examining you as only a little girl can, and are +making up their minds whether they, too, will go to college some day. +When you see this bright child peering at you,--there is your chance to +be something adorable! + +No one follows you with more sympathy than the teachers who have fitted +you for college. They have a share in you, remember; for teachers have a +reward beyond money in the futures of their pupils. + +We speak of college girls as if they had departed for the cloister; but +reckoning by weeks, how large a proportion of their time is spent at +home! In short vacations the unselfish mother plans all sorts of +pleasures for her daughter, and perhaps says sadly at the end, "I saw +little of Ruth. She made or received visits all the fortnight." The +short vacations should, I think, belong to your parents: the summer +gives time for other friends. Some day you will understand what it has +cost your father and mother to send you out of their sight just as you +have become most companionable to them. + +In the case of some of you there are sacrifices made at home that you +may go to college; and you will bravely share with your parents the +"doing without" that is making your liberal education possible. Your +social position in these next four years does not depend on money: it +does depend on intellect and character; on taste, not expense, in dress +and belongings; and on the traditions that you bring with you. "To him +that hath shall be given." The girl who takes something to college gets +more, as, when she travels, she gains in proportion to what she carries +with her. For example, if you take to college the family tradition of +reading, your college lot is a happier one. + +The poor girl in college has certain advantages: she is respected for +the effort she has made to get there; she at once excites the interest +of her teachers; she finds herself in an atmosphere of sympathy and +encouragement. She is generously praised, and is made happy by the +appreciation of her gifts. Let her guard against vanity and +priggishness. The poor and brilliant girl has her own temptations. + +If she suffer in some things because of her poverty, it does not matter +much. Privations, if they do not injure health, are bracing and tonic. A +girl will learn at college, if anywhere, how to be rich though poor. She +could be placed in no situation where she could more successfully ignore +poverty. Simplicity in dress is "good form" in college. The fatal word +"vulgar" is fixed by the initiated upon display, or extremes of fashion. +Taste and neatness are luxuries within the reach of girls of small +means. + +The rich girl has her difficulties. She is often handicapped by poor +preparation, which is not so much the fault of her fitting school as of +her social life too soon begun. She has had many distractions, with less +serious labor of preparation. College routine will be at first irksome +to her; but if she has chosen to go to college, she has stuff in her, +and she can make of herself the finest type of student. Her money will +be "means," and she will learn noble ways of spending it. Many is the +rich girl who is secretly helping a poor girl to get her education. + +Rich appointments make a girl's way harder at college, on the whole. +Scholars are distrustful of the appearances of wealth, sometimes +unjustly. The wise college girl will cultivate simplicity, that she may +be in harmony with her surroundings, and that she may have a free mind. + +The girl of wealth may lack the element of the heroic and the romantic +in the college career of the poor girl, but her compensations are that +she can command all means of culture; she can travel, buy books, visit +cities, and meet significant people. Her wealth buys her a wider life; +while the girl of small means has one more concentrated and intense. Her +pleasures may be keener because they are conquests; she relies on +herself and develops her own resources. We will wait to judge the two +until they are forty. + +Health is one of your "college duties"; so is happiness. + + "If I have faltered more or less + In my great task of happiness,"-- + +wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. He was a master of gallant living. He +really had something to whine about, but he lived with all his colors +flying. + +However, I shall not deny that there are "blues" peculiar to college +life. Occasionally they will be part of your education. There will be +wounds to your vanity; and years afterwards you will remember the snub +of some brusque, brilliant professor and will smile to think how much +you learned by it. You will see another girl surpass you, and envy will +give you a fit of the blues; for envy always punishes itself. The +college has, on the whole, an atmosphere of noble feeling, of +"admiration, hope, and love"; but a sin that some college girls have to +fight is the ugly sin of envy. Jealousy is akin to it, and is sure to +enter into narrow, intense friendships. The remedy is many friends and +many interests. + +A genuine source of blues is disappointment in one's self. I wonder if +you will believe an old college girl's experience that an occasional +bracing failure is the best thing that can happen to you. It will help +you to keep your balance, and to know yourself. Moreover, it will rouse +you as nothing else will. + +Trifles loom large in college life, its critics say. A freshman's world +looks black to-day because of a bad recitation or a neglectful friend. I +do not reason away her troubles: I only remind her of Abraham Lincoln's +remedy for the blues (and he knew well what they were). "Remember," he +said, "that they don't _last_." Also I would set her to some absorbing +task: "work is good company," and compels her to think about what she is +doing and not of her troubles. + +It was recorded upon the tomb of a Roman lady long ago, "She made nobody +sad." Make nobody sad with your woes, or your face, or your voice. And +if you wish to cheer yourself, cheer somebody else. You very likely need +rest for your nerves. College girls wear upon themselves and upon one +another by too much talking. Their minds are so mutually stimulating +that they need rest from their own company. One of the first conditions +for a satisfactory intellectual life is a room to one's self. The +college girl who cannot command it should spend much time alone out of +doors, even if she carry with her a book. + +When the college day is ended, and you look back over its hours, what +will have made its success, and what will have made its happiness? Have +you been "nobly busy"? I leave to you the answer. + + + + + The Riverside Press + + CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS + U . S . 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