A Girls Student Days and After | Page 5

place for vocal soloists. Its life is the life of an orchestra,
of many instruments playing together. The student's sense of
responsibility is shown by her attitude towards the corporate
government and administration of the school. Instead of regarding the
laws of her school as natural enemies, chafing against them, making
fun of them or evading them if possible, she has a duty in fulfilling
them. The consciousness of this responsibility is the very heart and soul
of the student self-government movement, for it recognizes not only the
obligation placed upon its members by an institution, but also the wide
influence one girl may have on others. Student government knows that
upper class girls can determine the spirit of the under classes. Even

looking at the matter from the lightest point of view, respectful and
law-abiding ways are always well-bred ways.
When a student becomes an alumna she can discharge a large part of
her great responsibility by realizing that it is not any longer so much a
question of what her school can give her as of what she can give to her
school. One thing she can always give it--that is, kindly judgment. And
she can acknowledge that her ideas of what her Alma Mater is after her
own school-days may not be correct. The school, sad to say, is
sometimes placed in the position of the kindly old farmer who, hearing
others call a certain man a liar, said: "Waal now, I wouldn't say he wuz
a liar. That's a bit harsh. I'd say he handled the truth mighty
careless-like." Schools find that some of their alumnæ handle the truth
mighty careless-like.
While she is still a student a girl's service to her school lies largely in
her daily work, the mental muscle she puts into all that she does in the
classroom and studies out of it. If because of her and a multiple of
many girls like her, the college does not possess that sine qua non of all
the higher mental life, an intellectual atmosphere, it is the student's and
her multiple's fault. "You may lead a horse to water but you cannot
make it drink," may be an old adage, but it would be hard to improve
upon it. You may set before students a veritable Thanksgiving feast of
things intellectual, but if they have no eagerness, no appetite for them,
the feast remains untouched. Energy and hunger of the mind, not the
anxious hosts, will in the end decide whether that feast is or is not to be
eaten.
The school considers not only scholarship but also the sum of all that it
is, its culture, its attainment, its moral force, as these elements are
expressed in its living members, its students and its teachers--in short,
its idealism. Idealism is having one's life governed by ideals, and an
ideal is a perfect conception of that which is good, beautiful and true. If
the girl's life is not governed by ideals, how, then, can the school hope
to have its idealism live or grow? Frequently students think of the
ideals of college or school as of something outside themselves, more or
less intangible, with which they may or may not be concerned. Students

cannot do their institution a greater injury than by harbouring such a
thought, for if their sense of responsibility will only make the idea of
the school personal, then indeed will the school be like that house upon
which the rains descended and the winds blew but it fell not, for it was
founded upon a rock.

III
FRIENDSHIPS
Homesickness and friendships, how much and how vivid a part they
play in the first year, or years, of school life! An old coloured physician
was asked about a certain patient who was very ill. "I'll tell you de
truf," was the reply. "Widout any perception, Phoebe Pamela may die
and she may get well; dere's considerable danger bofe ways." I will tell
you one truth about the first year of school life: friends there will surely
be, and homesickness there is likely to be,--there is "considerable
danger both ways."
Even if a girl has never been away from home before, it is possible that
she will not suffer from homesickness. It is probable, however, that the
new surroundings in which the girl finds herself, and the separation
from those who are the centre of her personal life, will bring on an
attack of this most painful malady. It takes time to fit comfortably into
the new surroundings, and meanwhile everything is strange.
Homesickness is not to be laughed at, but it must be less deadly, less
fatal than some people think it, or there would not be so many
recoveries. Girls often weep when they enter school, and then after the