A Girls Student Days and After | Page 2

sweetly and so long at
home, with every one saying, "Just hear Mary sing, isn't it wonderful!"
it is rather trying, you know, to go to a place where vocal solos are not
popular. And we wish some one--at least I did--had told us all about
this fact as well as other facts of school life. Anyway it should be a
comfort to have a book lying on the table in our school or college room,
or at home, which will tell us why Mary, after having been a famous

soloist at home made a failure or a great success in chorus work at
school. Such a book is something like having a loaded gun in readiness
for the robber. We may never use the shotgun or the book but they are
there, with the reassuring sense of shot in the locker.
It is something, is it not, to have a little book which will tell you how to
get into school and how to get out (for at times there seem to be
difficulties in both these directions)--in short, to tell you something of
many things: your first year at school or college, your part in the school
life, the friendships you will make, your study and how to work in it,
the pleasure and right kind of spirit involved in work, the quiet times,
as well as the jolly times, out-of-doors, your summers and how to
spend them, what the school has tried to do for you; and, as you go out
into the world, some of the aspects, whether you are to be wife,
secretary or teacher, of the work which you will do. Of one thing you
may be certain; that behind every sentence of this little book is
experience, that here are only those opinions of which experience has
made a good, wholesome zwieback.
I wish to take this opportunity to thank my friend, Mrs. Belle Kellogg
Towne, editor of The Girls' Companion and Young People's Weekly,
Chicago, for her coöperation in allowing me to use half the material in
this little book; also Dr. C. R. Blackall, of Philadelphia.
Camp Runway. J. M.

I
THE IDEAL FRESHMAN
Freshman year, the beginning year, the year of new experiences, new
delights, new work, new friends, new surroundings; the year that may
mean much to a girl, that may answer some of the questions that have
lain long in heart and mind, that will surely reveal her more clearly to
herself, that may make her understand others better and help her to
guess something of the riddle of the years to come!

What has the student done to get ready for this year? If she were going
camping she would know that certain things were necessary to make
the expedition a success. With what excitement and pleasure, what
thoughts of jolly camp-fires, deep, sweet-smelling forests, and long
days afoot, she would prepare everything. She would not let any one
else do this for her, for that would mean losing too much of the fun.
But the _freshman year_, what about the thinking and planning for that,
also an expedition into a new world, and a veritable adventure of a vast
deal more importance than a few days or weeks of camping? Would
she enter forests upon whose trees the camp-fires throw many shadows,
follow the stream that cleaves its way through the woods, go along the
runway of deer or caribou or moose, with a mind to all intents and
purposes a blank? No, her mind would be vivid with thoughts and
interests.
With the same keen attention should she enter the new year at school or
college, and as she passes through it, thinking about all that comes to
her, she will find it growing less and less difficult and more and more
friendly. She will consider what the freshman year is to be like, think of
what sorts of girls she is to meet and make friends with, what the work
will be, what she may expect in good times from this new adventure,
and, thoughtful about it all, make the minimum of mistakes and get the
maximum of benefit.
Here come some of the girls who are entering school and college with
her--bright-haired, dark-haired, rosy or pale, tall and thin, fat and short,
clever and average, desirable and undesirable,--in fact, all sorts and
conditions of girls. Who is to be the leader of them all? She is the ideal
freshman, a nice, well-set-up girl who does not think too much of
herself, who is not self-conscious, and who does not forget for what she
is sent to school. Despite the temptations of school life she uses her
days wisely and well. She does not isolate herself, for she sees the plan
and value of the