Girls and Women | Page 6

of
their lives, and do the best work they can for the sake of it. Still, they
may use the home-making faculty in some measure in the humblest
attic.
But there is a large and ever larger class of girls with other tastes than
domestic ones. Here, I think, the danger is greater than in case of even
the most unfortunate girls with domestic tastes; for tastes and talents do
not always agree. We have all known girls willing to practice six hours
a day who could never be musicians, and most girls think they could
write a book. Many people who are quite free to choose make too
ambitious a choice. It seems a part of the office of culture to correct
such ambitions. I have in mind a class of half-taught school-girls many
of whom fondly hoped to be poetesses; and I remember a class of
highly cultivated girls, who had had every advantage of education
which money could buy, who were full of anxiety on leaving school
because they could not see that they had capacity enough to do any
work worth doing in the world. The general verdict among them was
that as they had money they could give it to the poor, but that they had
nothing in themselves. They were as much too timid as the others were
too confident.

A girl who has to earn her living has a safeguard, for which few are
very thankful. No one will pay her to indulge her tastes without
reference to her talents. She finds out gradually what ought to be her
minor aim, for she discovers the special service she can render to the
world in return for what it offers to her. In most cases she wins a
reasonable measure of success and happiness.
But some of us are obstinate. We see one pathway we long to tread
even though it is beset with stones and briers. We are determined to
take that way, even if we never climb high enough to penetrate the
low-lying mists which darken it. We would rather pursue even a little
way the painful pathway which leads to the glorious mountain-top than
to follow an easier path to some lower summit. If we truly feel that, we
do well to take the path, for we have a right to forget ourselves for the
sake of our aim. But if we ask for success after all, it is mere blind
vanity which makes us so obstinate in our choice.
Let us remember that our direct usefulness in the world and most of our
conscious happiness will depend on our choosing and steadily pursuing
as our minor aim that for which our nature fits us, even if we wish our
nature had been different; while our utmost usefulness and our highest
happiness will depend on our clearness of vision in seeing, and our
unwavering fidelity in following, the grand aim of life.

II.
HEALTH.
Mr. Clapp says enthusiastically that we cannot imagine Rosalind or
Portia or Cordelia or Juliet with neuralgia or headache. And I believe
that Shakespeare's women have now taken the place of the more
lackadaisical and sentimental heroines of the past in the minds of many
girls.
Now that girls wish to be well, it is worth while to consider two
questions. First, why is health so important? Unless the answer to this

question is clear, how can any one be ready to sacrifice health to any
higher duty? Girls do sacrifice it frequently even when they know what
they are doing, but it is generally for a caprice, because they want to
dance later or skate longer, or study unreasonably; or sometimes they
cannot resist the temptation of food which is not convenient for them,
or they are willing to indulge their nerves too much, or it is too much
trouble not to take cold.
I wish every girl who knows that she does not live up to her light in this
respect would say to herself once a day for a month, "I ought to be
vigorously well if I want to do my part in the world, or to be in
thoroughly good spirits." I wish she would think of the meaning of
what she says, and then see if she does not do some things she is loth to
do and avoid some pleasing temptations. I believe a month's application
of this formula would give her a new insight into the value of health. I
speak not only of health, but of vigorous health. We want to do our part
in the world, and that part ought to be our utmost. Agassiz could work
fifteen hours a day. Most of us could never do anything so magnificent
as that, and the attempt to do it