Girls and Women | Page 4

her heart. If she had no higher aim than to be a good actress her life did not avail much. But if her acting was only the minor aim, then her life was thoroughly noble as well as successful. Her choice of a minor aim makes it probable that she also had the highest aim. Otherwise she would have been either more or less humble. She would either have wished to be a star actress or have been contented with any trifling parts which brought her money and admiration.
The best happiness comes from our perseverance in following the grand aim of life. But "the kind of happiness which we all recognize as such" is generally that which comes from the successful pursuit of our minor aim. Herbert Spencer says that every creature is happy when he is fully using his powers. I have known a girl with a magnificent voice who endured great hardships for a musical education, and who finally accomplished her purpose and enchanted the world with her singing. She was happy. Of course everybody expected her to be. But I have known another girl, equally happy, carefully working in the laboratory to find the water-tubes of a star-fish or the nerves of a clam. This girl said to me with a face bright with enthusiasm, "When I first began to work with Professor ---- in the laboratory it was as if I had been traveling all my life in a desert land, and had suddenly come upon fountains of fresh water." She was as poor and obscure as my singer was rich and famous, but she was using her powers and was happy.
Of course the kind of happiness to be found even in secondary success depends on the great aim of any life. In some cases it almost seems as if the minor aim were the only one. The happiness it brings cannot go very high, yet so far as a looker-on may judge it feels like happiness. But most people--perhaps all, if we only knew it--do acknowledge the grand aim in life, even though they make very little effort to reach it. When they consciously neglect this for the minor aim, they are uneasy and not thoroughly happy; but when the minor aim is good in itself and is always made subservient to the higher, success there does prove a well-spring of delight.
Spencer's remark is also true in the best sense, for no powers crave exercise so much as the higher powers. If my singer had done a sinful deed no applause could have made her happy. And, on a lower plane, if she had lost the husband she dearly loved, even her art would not have satisfied her.
It may seem as if I am choosing all my illustrations from among people who have special gifts, and that nothing I say applies to the great army of girls who will never be distinguished, and who are all the dearer for not wishing to be so. I have not forgotten this, but I began with striking illustrations because they are easiest to understand.
The grand aim of life should be the same for all, whether gifted or not. But the particular aim must vary with the individual. Probably with five girls out of ten the particular aim is to have a happy home. Once we might have said nine girls out of ten, but the present tendency of thought is to make girls ambitious,--too ambitious, it sometimes seems, for the very best of life.
Of course selfishness shows itself in various ways, and the girl who wishes to have a happy home without thinking how she shall make a happy home may be more selfish than the girl who dreams of fame, but with the understanding that the price of fame is, and ought to be, the giving of some blessing to the world.
I know a delightful girl who seems to think of nothing but making others happy from the moment when she meets her maid with a cheerful "Good-morning," till she contrives that some less attractive girl shall have the most desirable partner in the ball-room in the evening. She gives her money and her time and her thought to the service of other people. This is so natural to her that no one thinks of her as making it a conscious aim, but the result is so beautiful as to suggest that it would be the best aim for every girl. Nevertheless she has a still higher aim, for sometimes the happiness of other people--at least their visible happiness--clashes with some other duty. Then she does not fail. She gives her hard refusal in pleasant but firm words, and she tells the truth even if it makes some one wince. She is not a genius, but, on