Miss Ashton's New Pupil Part 6

"I have no time for secret societies," said Dorothy with a good-natured laugh. "I want twice as many hours for my studies. Thank you, all the same, Kate."

"Secret society! what is that?" asked Marion. "What is it secret for?

What do you do in it that you don't want to have known? I don't like the secret part of it. My father used to tell me about the secret societies in Yale College, and they were full of boys' sc.r.a.pes. He nearly got turned out of college for his part in one of them; and if I should get turned out from here, it would break his heart. No, thank you, I'd better not."

So, sure that _no_ from them meant no, Kate had reported to the club, and received permission to invite Susan Downer and Gladys Philbrick in their places.

"Sue will come of course, and be glad to," the club said. "Really, on the whole, she will be better than Dorothy, for Dorothy always wants to toe the line."

Of Gladys, they by no means felt so sure. "She is, and she isn't,"

Lucy Snow said; "but she has lots of money, and that means splendid spreads."

"But she won't--she won't"--Martha Dodd stopped.

"Won't what?" asked the president in a most dignified manner.

"Won't go through the corridors with her boots in her hands," said Mamie with a rueful face, "and get dosed. She'd stamp right along into Miss Ashton's room, and say,--

"'Miss Ashton, I'm late. Mark me, will you?'"

"She will keep us straight, then. I vote for Gladys;" and the first to hold up her hands--both of them--was Missionary Dodd.

So Gladys and Susan were invited to become members of the club, and accepted gladly, not knowing their room-mates had declined the same honor.

It was in this way that the club was to influence the rooms.

October, the regal month, when nature puts on her most precious vestments, dons her crowns of gold, clothes herself in scarlet robes, with girdles of richest browns, has a half-hushed note of sadness in the anthems she sings through the dropping leaves, listens for the farewell of departing birds, and tries in vain to call back to the browning earth the dying flowers. This month was always considered in Montrose Academy the time for settling down to hard work in earnest.

Vacation, with its rest and its pleasures, seemed far behind the life of the two hundred young girls who had entered into, and been absorbed by, the present, and who were roused by ambitions for the future.

Marion's room-mates went thoroughly into the work required of them.

"Your faithfulness during the first six weeks of the term," Miss Ashton had said to them in one of her morning talks, "will determine your standard for the year. Do not any of you think you can be indolent now, and pick up your neglected studies by and by.

"You may trust my experience when I tell you that, in the whole number of years since I have been connected with this school, I never knew a pupil who failed in her duties during the first half of the first term of the year, who afterwards did, indeed could, make up the lost opportunities.

"It is not only what you lose out of the pa.s.sing recitation that you can never find again, but, of even more consequence, it is what you lose in forming honest, faithful habits of study.

"There are many different ways of studying. I have often tried to make these plain to you. I will repeat them. First, learn to give your whole attention to your lesson; _fix your mind upon it_. This sounds as if it would be an easy thing to do; but, in truth, it is very difficult. I am sorry to say I do not think there are a dozen girls among you who can do this successfully, even after years of training.

You can train your body to accomplish wonders, but it is hard to believe that the mind is even more capable of being brought into subjection by the will than the body; and, to do that, to make your mind your servant, is to accomplish the greatest result of your education. Only as far as your study and your general life here do that, are they of any true value to you.

"You will ask me how are you to fix your attention when there are so many things going on around you to distract your thoughts? I can only answer, that as our minds are in many respects of different orders, so, no general rule can be given. If you will, each one, faithfully make the attempt, I have no doubt you will succeed, in just the same proportion as you are faithful.

"It may be as well, as I consider this the keystone of all good study, that I should leave the other helps and hindrances for some future talk; and it will give me a great deal of pleasure if I can hear from any of you at the end of a week's trial, that you have found yourselves helped by my advice."

It speaks well for Miss Ashton's influence over her school that there was not a pupil there who was not moved by what she had said.

To be sure, its effect was not equally apparent. There were some who had scant minds to fix, and what nature had been n.i.g.g.ardly in bestowing, they had frittered away in a trifling life; but for the earnest girls, those who truly longed to make the most of themselves and to be able to do a worthy work in the life before them, such advice became at once a help.

"It sounds like my mother's letter to me," Marion Parke said to Dorothy, as they went together to their room. "She insists that it is not so much the facts we learn, as the help they give us in the use of our minds. I wonder if all educated people think the same?"

"All thoroughly educated people I am sure do," answered Dorothy.

"Sometimes I feel as if my mind was a musical instrument; and if I didn't know every note in it, the only sounds I should ever hear from it would be discords,"--at which rather Irish comparison, both girls laughed.

CHAPTER X.

CHOOSING A PROFESSION.

There was one peculiarity of Montrose Academy that had been slow to recommend itself to the parents of its pupils. That was the elective system, which was adopted after much controversy on the part of the Board of Trustees.

The more conservative insisted that the prosperity of the past had shown the wisdom of keeping strictly to a curriculum that did not allow individual choice of studies. The newer element in the Board were equally sure that to oblige a girl to go through a course of Latin and Greek, of higher mathematics, of logic and geology, who, on leaving school, would never have the slightest use for them, was simply a waste of time. A compromise was made at length, by which, for five years, the elective system should be practised, it being claimed that no shorter time could fairly prove its success or its failure; and during this period certain studies of the old course should be insisted upon. First and foremost the Bible, the others chosen to depend upon the cla.s.s.

The year of Marion's entering the school was the second of the experiment; and, after joining the middle cla.s.s and having her regular lessons a.s.signed to her, she was not a little surprised, and in truth confused, by Miss Ashton asking her, as if it was a matter of course, "What do you intend to _do_ in the future?" as if she expected her to have her future all mapped out, and was to begin at once her preparation for it. Miss Ashton saw her embarra.s.sment, and helped her by saying,--

"Many of the young ladies come here with very definite plans; for instance, your room-mate Dorothy is fitting for a teacher, and a very fine one she will make! Gladys is making special study of everything pertaining to natural science,--geology, botany, physics, and chemistry. She intends when she goes back to Florida to become an agriculturist. I dare say you have already heard her talk of the wonderful possibilities to be found there. Her father is an enthusiast in the work, and she means to fit herself to be his able a.s.sistant.

Susan wants to be a banker, and avails herself of every help she can find toward it.

"You see our little lame girl Helen! She is to be an artist, and devotes all her spare time to courses in art. She is in the second year, and has made wonderful progress in shading in charcoal from casts and models. She uses paints, both oils and watercolors, but those do not come in our regular course.

"If we see any special talent in a pupil in any line, we do not confine ourselves to what we can do for her, but we call in extra help from abroad.

"Kate Underwood is to be a lawyer. Mamie Smythe has a new chosen profession for every new year, but as she is an only child, and her mother is wealthy, she will never enter one.

"I might go on through perhaps an eighth of the school, and point out to you girls who are studying with an aim. For the greater number, they are content to go on with the regular curriculum; as their only object, and that of their parents for them, seems to be to secure sufficient education to make them pa.s.s creditably through the common life of ordinary women.

"I thought you might have a definite object in view; and as you are now fairly started in your cla.s.ses, and, as your teachers tell me, are doing very well, if you had a plan, you could find time to choose such other studies as would help you."

This was new to Marion; she asked for time to think it over, which Miss Ashton gladly allowed her.

She had in her heart made her choice, but that, with all the other advantages offered, she could do anything except in a general way to help this choice forward, she had never dreamed. Her room-mates noticed how silent and thoughtful she was after her talk with Miss Ashton, and wondered what could be the cause, surely she was too faithful and far too good a scholar for any remissness that would have to be rebuked; but no one asked her a question.

It was after two days that Marion wrote her mother, and her letter caused a great surprise in the Western parsonage. This is in part what she wrote:--

"Miss Ashton has asked me what I am to _do_ in the future. It seems they not only give you the regular curriculum, but are ready to allow you elective studies, by which you can fit yourself for your particular future.

"I wonder if you will think me a foolish girl when I write you that, if you both approve, I should like to be a doctor! Don't laugh! I have seen so much sickness that there was no really educated physician to relieve, and am, as you have so often called me, 'a regular born nurse,' that the profession, if a profession I am capable of acquiring, seems very tempting to me.

There is no hurry in the decision, only please think it over, and write me your advice."

It was not long before an answer came:--

"You are quite capable of choosing for yourself; and if you turn naturally to the medical profession, you will have our full approval of your choice."

When Marion read this, she felt as if she had grown suddenly many years older. She looked carefully over the list of studies, to see from which she could gain the greatest help, and in a short time after her conversation with Miss Ashton she reported herself as a future M.D.

This was not a rare profession for a young girl to choose. Miss Ashton knew that already there were a number with that in view. What she doubted was, whether a quarter of them would ever carry out their intention; and this was one thing which, favoring on the whole as she did the elective system, she could but acknowledge told against it,--the uncertainty which their youth, and the natural tendency of a girl's mind to change, gave. She had known them in one year, or even a shorter time, an enthusiast in one profession, then, becoming tired of it, and sure another was more suited to their abilities, turn to the new choice.

One thing, however, was certain: she comforted herself by remembering, that the mental discipline which they had acquired would stay with them, even after the whim of the time had ceased to influence them.