Girls and Women | Page 6

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 would probably end in our being unfitted to do any work at all. But suppose Agassiz had said, "Twelve hours is too much for most men to work, so I can afford to be careless of my surplus health as long as I have strength to work twelve hours." The world would not only have lost much in the matter of his discoveries, but the spirit of all his work would have been