Stray Thoughts for Girls | Page 2

a
common nature, Women would all have wings.
Talent she may not have, Beauty, nor wit, nor grace, But, until she's
among the angels, She cannot be commonplace.
Arthur Heathcote.

The Virtuous Woman.
A FAREWELL BIBLE LESSON TO GIRLS ON LEAVING
SCHOOL.
"Wisdom ordereth all things strongly and sweetly."--WISDOM viii. 1

(Vulg.).
It would be interesting to make a "Garden of Women" from the poets,
collecting the pictures of "Fair Women" they have drawn for us, but I
want to consider specially the ideal woman of that ancient poet
Solomon, and to see how far she can be translated into modern life.
The subject ought to be considered by you who are leaving a school
you have loved and valued, and which you should commend to the
world, by showing that it has made you fit for home. Beaumaris School
has a blank shield for its arms, with the motto, "Albam exorna," "Adorn
the white;" you are all starting with white shields, and you can adorn
the white: it is not only in Spenser that we find Britomarts. You are as
much a band of champions as were King Arthur's Knights; you have all
the same enemy, have made the same vows, and for a year have been in
fellowship, learning and practising the same lessons: can you help
feeling that there is a responsibility laid on you, to see that the world
shall be the better because of you? Be like Sir Galahad with his white
shield on which "a bloody cross" was signed, when he had fought and
won.
You know that I admire the old-fashioned type of woman--the
womanly woman,--and you will not suspect me of wishing you to start
off "on some adventure strange and new," but I do want you not to be
content to lead a commonplace life; you must, anyway, live your life:
resolve that by God's grace you will live it nobly. You cannot alter the
outward form of your life,--you will probably be surrounded by very
commonplace household duties, and worries, and jars,--but you can be
like King Midas, whose touch turned the most common things to gold.
We have it in our power, as Epictetus tells us, to be the gold on the
garment of Life, and not the mere stuff of which Fate weaves it. We
can choose whether we will live a king's life or a slave's: Marcus
Aurelius on his throne was a king, for nothing could conquer him; but
Epictetus in chains was equally unconquerable and equally a king. We
all have the choice between the Crown and the Muck Rake, and I think
we sometimes turn to the straws and the rubbish, not because they are
fascinating to us, but because they seem the only things open to us: we

do not feel as if our lives had anything to do with Crowns. If you think
of your various homes from the point of view of turning their
"necessities to glorious gains," and as a field for winning your spurs, I
suspect you are each feeling that this is very "tall talk" for such a
commonplace home as yours. "All lives have an ideal meaning as well
as their prose translation;" but you feel perhaps that you are sure to be
swamped in little bothers and duties, and pleasures, and dulness and
stagnation, so that you will find it hard to see any ideal meaning at all.
This is not true, and to look on an ideal life as "tall talk" is a snare of
the Devil; and in these days of common sense and higher education we
need to guard against it, and to remember that "a thing may be good
enough for practical purposes, but not for ideal purposes." "Ideal life"
is not tall talk, but our plain duty, unless our Lord was mocking us
when He said, "Be ye perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect."
To know our ideal is one step towards attaining it. "So run, not as
uncertainly; so fight, not as one that beateth the air." Before taking such
a definite step in life as leaving school, it would be very interesting to
draw up a plan of what you would like your life to be, and also of what
you hope to make of the life apparently before you, which may be very
different from the life you would like. If you kept it, like sealed orders,
for five years, it would be interesting to see how your views had
changed, and how prayers had been answered in unexpected ways, and
it would also be a solemn warning to see, as we assuredly should, that
wilful prayers had been heard to our hurt.
Bacon, when he made a new start as Solicitor-General, made a survey
of his