Stray Thoughts for Girls Part 9

Is there any great mental good which you can gain by the study of Languages, quite apart from the advantage of being able to read and speak when you go abroad? Yes; it enlarges your mind to know the various ways in which things are expressed by different nations. A person who knows no language but his own is like a man who can only see with one eye. It opens a whole new world of thought to realize that other nations have other words.

Again, it makes you know your own language. Translation gives you choice of words and trains you to appreciate delicate shades of meaning; this helps you to appreciate Poetry, for one of the main beauties of great poets, such as Milton and Tennyson, is their marvellous perception of shades of difference, and the felicity with which they choose exactly the right adjective!

It is said that barbarous tribes use a very small vocabulary; I sometimes fear we may be going back to a savage state, when I think of the vocabulary of a modern schoolgirl, and see how much ground is covered over with these two narrow words, "awfully" and "jolly." Hannah More complained, in her day, of the indiscriminate use of the word "nice."

"Formerly," she says, "a person was 'charming,' or 'accomplished,' or 'distinguished,' or 'well-bred,' or 'talented,' etc., and each word had its own shade of meaning; now, every one is 'nice,' which saves much thought." "Nice" held its position, for we find Miss Austen making Henry Tilney laugh at the same misuse of the word. "Awfully" and "jolly" seem to perform the same kind office for us which "nice" did for our grandmothers,--they "save us much thought," and are used with a large disregard of their inappropriateness; I have even been told by a girl that the _Christian Year_ was "such an awfully jolly book"! Now, I am sure of this: you will find excessive use of those two words always betokens an empty, or rather an uncultivated, mind. I do not believe in any exception; their votaries may have learning, but they have not digested it, they are not thoughtful, they are "young (or old) barbarians," for it is the unfailing mark of a cultivated mind, to use the right word in the right place, and never "to use a sixpenny word when a threepenny one will do."

History should not be bare facts; it ill.u.s.trates and explains politics of our own day; it teaches sympathy and large-mindedness, and the power of admiring virtues which are not of our own type. The Royalist learns to see the strength of Cromwell, and the Roundhead to see the beauty of "the White King." It ought to make the world bigger to us by helping us to realize other places and other times. If we are to live quiet stay-at-home lives afterwards, it is very important that we should try not to be narrow and "provincial," and history and geography should help us in this matter.

Poetry in the same way helps to make us imaginative, which is necessary, if we are to have the Christian graces of tact and sympathy. It is very important to learn the best poetry by heart; it is dull perhaps at first, but new meanings unfold themselves every time we say it. Mr. Ruskin says we ought to read a few verses every day, as we should do with the Bible, to keep our lives from getting choked with commonplace dust, to remind us that the Ideal exists. It certainly puts new beauty into life if we know what poets have said about it, and how they expressed themselves, and this might save us from unworthy expression. I have heard an intelligent schoolgirl, looking at a glorious sunset, say concisely, "How awfully jolly!" I have heard a schoolboy say, "How rum!" I believe they were both touched, but I think they would have expressed themselves differently and have got more pleasure out of it if they had been taught to see, by having it reflected from poets and painters, and had known more of "the best that has been thought and said."

There was so much I wanted to say that it is difficult to stop. I have given only general ideas, but bear in mind--as the main point of what I have said--that I want you to educate yourselves, to get ready for life, and to use your lessons here to bring out those qualities which you will want afterwards in everyday life.

Now, how will such general lessons help you in after-life?

First, I want them to help you to be interested in the things you will meet with in books and newspapers and conversation; you will not hear much about some lessons, but you will about these things--they are things that it "becomes a young woman to know."

Then, too, I want you to leave school with introductions to all sorts of nice people in books; you will find it do you as much good as social introductions. Schoolgirls are often "out of it" for a time, when they go home, because they had only "lesson-book" interests; I should like to begin outside interests with you.

Also, this kind of general interest makes the world seem bigger and more interesting; we get an idea of how many delightful things there are in it, and so our pleasures are increased, which is always a great advantage.

Happiness is a duty, and sensible interests are a wonderful help to it.

Touching on many interests shows us our ignorance. I have known schoolgirls, who were kept to their lessons, Algebra and Latin and periods of History, and who thought they knew a good deal, because they measured by a schoolroom standard. When they came in contact with the number of things that cultivated people of society care for and appreciate, they learnt a good deal of humility. Certainly the more I read on general subjects the more I feel my own ignorance, and I think it would be very odd if it did not have the same effect on you.

The next reason for this sort of lesson, and one of the best, is that it ought to raise our taste. It is not enough to like or dislike a book: we ought to train ourselves to like the best books. We do not think ourselves born judges in music or art; we submit to being trained before we think our opinion worth giving. It would be just so with a book, but you often hear girls quite sorry for the author if they find a book dull; they feel he is to blame! When I find an author dull, whom good critics admire, I feel pretty sure that I am deficient on that point, and I try to learn to see in him what they do. I speak from experience; when I found Wordsworth dull, I knew it was my own fault, and I read and re-read him, and listened to those who could appreciate him, and now I am rewarded by his being a real part of the pleasures of my life. We need not leave off liking the merely pretty writers, such as Miss Procter and Longfellow. I love Longfellow and admire Miss Procter, but I cared for them both quite as much when I was seven, and an author who can be in some measure appreciated at seven ought to give way to deeper authors by-and-by. Like Guinevere, it is our duty "to love the highest." The great good of cultivated homes is that we learn to "put away childish things" and to admire the better things which we hear talked of. Some of you may not have this advantage; your people may be too busy for talking about books and such things, and some of you may be cut off from interesting talks by having school lessons to prepare when you would like to listen. Therefore, I should like you to get some talk in school on such subjects--to spend some "Half-hours with the best Authors."

Holidays.

"Where shall we spend the holidays?" has doubtless been discussed in many households, by both parents and children,--I wonder if the children followed it up by a still more important question, "_How_ shall I spend the holidays?" Just at the close of a term you will not want me to suggest anything that is like lessons, but at the same time I do not see why you should spend seven weeks in idleness and novel-reading, any more than you would live for seven weeks on puddings and sweets. You like plenty of sweets, and I hope you will get them, but I hope you will have meat as well!

There are many books which are not novels, and which you would yet enjoy,--books which would send you back more thoughtful; and though you might not know any one lesson better next term because of having read them, yet you would be a step nearer to being the sort of women you would like to be. I dare say when you go for your holiday you will get something to read at the station bookstall. Now, several of the books I mean can be got there, as easily as yellow novels, and can be got for the price of _Punch_; they are so small you could have them in your pocket and get them read in odds and ends of time, out-of-doors, so that you need not miss any expedition, or any fresh air, through staying in the house to study. In the same way you could get some really good poem for a penny, and learn it by heart. Nothing would please me so much as if you all brought me next term the name of some book you had read, of this kind, and repeated to me a poem of the sort that you think I should like--which very likely is not the sort _you_ like, as yet. It would do you good, whether you enjoyed it or not, for you would be teaching yourselves to like the better kind of books if you persevered with it, and your holidays would be pleasanter, as well as better, if there was some effort of this kind to give backbone to each day. Cooks say there should be a pinch of salt in everything you eat, and I am sure we ought to have a pinch of the moral salt of self-conquest in each day, just to keep it sweet and good.

Perhaps you will think I am always wanting you to read, and you would like to remind me that there are many other commendable pursuits. I certainly am rather of the opinion Lowell expresses in "Democracy." He says, "Southey, in his walk one stormy day, met an old woman, to whom, by way of greeting, he made the rather obvious remark that it was dreadful weather. She answered, philosophically, that, in her opinion, 'any sort of weather was better than none!'" I should be half inclined to say that any reading was better than none.

Yet you are quite right about those other pursuits, and I hope you will follow them; but at the same time, if you have not already got a taste for reading, it is the most important of all tastes for you to strive to acquire, as it is very doubtful if you will manage otherwise to do so in later life. I should pity you terribly if you failed to acquire it, for you will all find life hard in one way or another, and you will find that a love of reading is even more valuable than a sense of humour in helping you over rough places. And--over and above the minor, more "worldly"

support of its power of amusing and interesting you, even in the most "set grey life"--it is linked to those higher helps, without which, neither reading nor anything else will do us much good. St. Hugh of Lincoln made much of good books because he said they "made illness and sorrow endurable," and, besides this, they save you from many temptations. It has been well said, "It is very hard for a person who does not like reading to talk without sinning.... Reading hinders castle-building, which is an inward disease, wholly incompatible with devotion.... Towards afternoon a person who has nothing to do drifts rapidly away from G.o.d. To sit down in a chair without an object is to jump into a thicket of temptation. A vacant hour is always the devil's hour. Then a book is a strong tower, nay, a very church, with angels lurking among the leaves."

But although I must allow reading to be my special hobby,--one, however, which is run very hard in my affections by both cooking and gardening,--still I quite appreciate other hobbies, and I should be quite as much pleased next term if, instead of telling me about books read and bringing me a piece of poetry learnt (by-the-by, I do very much wish you would all learn Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" during the holidays)--if, instead of this, you showed me collections of wild flowers or sh.e.l.ls. A little time ago I saw a charming book of dried flowers, collected by a set of children just out of a kindergarten. Each flower had a page to itself, with its name neatly written, and any extra local names which it happened to possess. On the opposite page was written any verses of poetry that the children could find about it; and I was quite surprised to see what a good collection they had of bits from Tennyson and Shakespeare and Wordsworth, etc. Of course, the older sisters and the mothers must have helped them in this part, but such a book, made in the holidays, would be the work of the whole family, so you would have plenty of help; and you will notice that the poetical part of it is a special attraction to me, as it affords exercise to my own hobby both in reading and in verifying quotations.

I think I had better here give you warning that when you come back next term every one will have to write an essay, describing some one place they have been to during the holidays. I tell you now, that you may try to find out all you can of the real interest of the place; its historical, or legendary, or literary a.s.sociations, or its flowers, or sh.e.l.ls, or fossils.

There is one other point of holiday-making on which I should like to talk to you. Some of you may have read Charles Lamb's amusing essay on "Popular Fallacies;" I suppose every one could add to his list from their own experience of life. One of the popular fallacies I should like to combat is, that "holidays are 'the children's hour;'" though I quite allow that, like most popular fallacies, it has many grains of truth in it. The little victims consider that conscientious application to grammar and history deserves a compensating course of lying in bed in the morning, sitting up late at night, and general indulgence, with every right-minded member of the household waiting upon them, and making plans for their amus.e.m.e.nt.

Now, I quite see their side of the question. It is not pleasant, day after day, to go on steadily with work, which you do not happen to care for; to be cut off from this or that expedition, because lessons interfere; to have to get up early every morning; to lose this or that visit;--and, therefore, I hope your holidays may be full of fun, and that you may be richly rewarded for any struggles you may have made during the term.

But there is another side of it all, and _term-time_ is "the children's hour," from one point of view.

Instead of the term being, for children, a time of self-denial, and the holidays, a time of well-earned self-indulgence,--I feel that term-time means self-denial for the parents, and selfishness for the children. Do not misunderstand me; the selfishness which I mean is forced upon you,--it is your duty, in term-time, to put lessons first. It may very well be that some of you feel you were wrongly selfish in your way of doing it,--that you allowed school work and school interests to blind you to the helpful things you might have done at home without any injury to the lessons. I occasionally hear such things as, that school is "so bad for girls, because So-and-so gets so engrossed with her work that she is irritable when any demand is made on her time, and is deep in her books when any demand is made on her sympathies; and when she is not studying, she and her school friends are running in and out of each other's houses, so that her mother might as well have no daughter at all." I do beg that none of you will bring this discredit on school life, for the system gets blamed when it is really your individual shortcoming which is in fault; you ought to be big enough to hold both school and home interests! But, setting aside this form of term-time selfishness, which we shall all agree to condemn, there remains another form of it, which is a duty. You must put lessons first, or you will be wasting both your parents' money and that leisure for self-improvement, which, as a rule, is only granted to us while we are young. You are not free, yet, to be as useful at home as you would like to be; your mother has to do without a daughter, to a large extent, or to avail herself of one with the uncomfortable feeling that the daughter is losing valuable time thereby, and probably is considering herself a martyr in having to do unscholastic duties. I dare say the daughter feels, "It isn't to please myself that I slave at my lessons; mother would be vexed if I didn't; and it's very hard that I should be both hindered in them and made to do other things as well,--it's quite bad enough in term-time to have to f.a.g at lessons." But just consider, for a moment, this "f.a.gging at lessons:" _you_ feel that in so doing you are making a concession to your mother, for which she ought to show unbounded grat.i.tude by all manner of sweetmeats in the holidays. But who profits by these lessons,--your mother, who denies herself many a small luxury to be able to pay for them, or you, who are being fitted by them to take a good place in after-life? It seems to me that the grat.i.tude and the sweatmeats ought to flow from you to her; I quite see the force of it, if any girl feels what I have just described,--I flatter myself I generally do see the force of my victim's complaints; but it does not do my victim much good, because I generally also see the force of something else, which is of superior importance, but which the victim, very likely, will not see till she is older.

If you have read that pearl of stories, "Cranford," you will remember how Mrs. Jenkyns, to avoid explaining things to the small Deborah, "took to stirring the fire or sending the 'forrard' child on an errand." Now, unlike Mrs. Jenkyns, I believe in explaining my views to the "forrard"

children, as I think the superiority of girls over boys consists in the remarkably early age at which girls begin to be reasonable! After expressing such a high opinion of you, I hope you will all prove me right, by seeing the truth that underlies the theory I am putting before you, which I am sure you will all be inclined to reckon as a fallacy!

There is no need for me to dwell on the desirability of holidays being made pleasant for _you_--fathers and mothers are only too ready to do it; but there is a need for somebody to dwell on the desirability of holidays being made pleasant for fathers and mothers. They are too unselfish generally to speak for themselves, especially in holiday time. I hear them saying, in deprecation of my hard-heartedness, "Oh, let the poor children have a good time! they can only be young once; they work hard at school, let them have a little fun in the holidays." I quite agree: I believe in as much fun as you can get: I should like to be able to insist as sternly on your all enjoying yourselves in the holidays, as I should on your working in term-time. There was a great deal of sound wisdom in that Eastern potentate, who proclaimed a general holiday, adding, "Make merry, my children, make merry; he who does not make merry will be flogged!"

At the same time, much as I care for your having fun, I do not see why "fun" should mean upsetting all the household arrangements, and doubling the servants' work, by your late hours in the morning; at all events, after the first few mornings, when perhaps it is only natural you should wish to feel your liberty. But sooner or later you will have to learn that liberty, for reasonable beings, only means being free to forge your own chains,--being free to make such rules as you know are necessary, if you are to live a wholesome, health-giving life. Being late for prayers is hardly a form of self-government which we should admire in the abstract, though it is very tempting in practice; and keeping your mother waiting for her breakfast, or else letting her have a solitary meal, is hardly a good way of being that domestic sunbeam which schoolgirls are supposed to have time to be,--in holidays!

Holidays are sometimes spent in incessant excursions with young friends, leaving your mother at home to look after the little ones; and yet, perhaps, your mother had a very dull time of it in term-time, when you were either at work, and could not be spoken to, or were busy over school gossip with some friend, and, perhaps, she looked forward to the holidays as a time when she would get a little companionship from the daughter for whom she makes so many sacrifices. But she is too unselfish to be the least drag upon you; so she asks a school friend to stay with you, and, somehow, always has a good reason for really wanting not to join the expedition, and takes the younger ones off your hands with an air of its being almost self-indulgence on her part to do it. But, all the same, whatever she says, mothers like going about too, and, even if they do not, they like to feel that their presence makes part of their daughter's pleasure in the holiday pleasurings. You may think it very hard-hearted and mistaken of me to suppose that you would be so selfish with your mother, but I have, often and often, seen it done, and I feel like a little boy I know, who can hardly speak yet, but who is evidently born to be a general redresser of wrongs,--he is very quickly struck by any instance of the folly and injustice of the world, and his favourite remark is, "_Somebody_ ought to tell them; why shouldn't I?" Now, _somebody_ ought to say this about mothers, and the mothers who do the unselfish things are the last people who will ever remind you that they, too, have feelings, so I will usurp that little boy's office, and tell you myself, for I am quite sure that, if it ever struck you, you would be shocked at doing it, but,

"Evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart."

However, I do not intend to make this my closing quotation, as I am sure my children will have plenty of both heart and thought, and that they will shed around them a full supply of that sunshine which the weather seems so determined to deny us! I suppose we must allow, with Southey's old woman, that "any weather is better than none," but it is incontestable that we seem likely to have every opportunity afforded us, during these holidays, at all events, of

"Making a sunshine in a _shady_ place."

Sunday.

In many ways this is a disquieting age in which to live, and yet it is also markedly hopeful. It is true that the power of authority and of custom is crumbling on many sides, but surely this should lead to the laying of deeper and truer foundations. In this very question of Sunday, the Fourth Commandment used to settle the question, whereas now we investigate its origins and claims in a way which sounds rebellious and unfilial. Yet it may be nearer the mind of Christ than unthinking obedience, for the servant accepts with blind obedience this or that rule spoken by his master; the friend, the son, strives to understand "his father's innermost mind." He may or may not be convinced that certain words spoken on Mount Sinai, about the Jewish Sabbath, were intended to refer to the Christian Sunday; but, in either case, he realizes the nature of the spiritual life, and perceives that worship and thought and time are essential to it. He sees that the old Jewish rule tends to develop this spiritual life, and therefore, until he finds a better way, he feels it morally binding on himself; not because it was a Jewish rule, but because it a.s.sists his own growth.

Suppose a master admired a bed of lilies and said, "Let me always find some here;" if a landslip destroyed that bed, a slave might feel absolved from further trouble about lilies, but the son would say, "No; we can give my father what he wants by growing them elsewhere--it was not so much the bed, as the lilies, that he really cared for."

G.o.d will look in us for the lilies of peace and spiritual-mindedness, which only grow where there is what the old Babylonians called "a Sabbath of the heart." Are we to feel absolved from responding to His demand because old Jewish ways have vanished? When St. Paul speaks so slightingly of "times and seasons and Sabbaths," does he mean that the worship and meditation belonging to such seasons were valueless? No; he is rather saying, "How can you think that our Father values, not the lilies, but only the fact of their growing on this or that bit of earth?"

Every day, landslips are altering the features of G.o.d's great garden--this present world. We can no longer rely on definite instructions to plant in this or that place; many circ.u.mstances, as yet unborn, may hinder it. But we must get it well into our minds that the Master will certainly come down into His garden to ask for lilies, and that we must plant without delay; tools and methods may be improved upon, certain aspects which are now favourable may be deprived of sun by future buildings, but let us clearly realize that the end and object of having a garden is to grow flowers, though ways and means may vary with the times.

It is much easier to follow rules than to be inspired with the burning desire to produce flowers and the moral thoughtfulness which uses the best methods of the day.

But you can less well afford to do without moral thoughtfulness now than you could have done a generation ago. Thirty years ago a woman's path was hedged in by signposts and by-laws, and danger-signals, to which she attended as a matter of course; to-day, she has to find her way across a moorland with uncertain tracks, which she may desert at will. She needs to know something of the stars to guide her now--she needs n.o.bler and deeper teaching than in the days of convenances and chaperons.

At present you have your home ways to guide, but you will find Sunday vary in almost every house you stay in, and when you marry you will have to set the tone of a household; if you are to keep Sunday rightly in the future, you must learn now to value it rightly, and that means moral thoughtfulness,--a realization of our need of an inner life and of what that inner life requires for its sustenance, and an appreciation of the teaching of the Church Catechism, which tells us that our duty to G.o.d begins with Worship.

What can we say as to the positive duty of keeping Sunday? We can hardly say we are literally bound by the Jewish Sabbath, since, for Jewish Christians, the Sabbath and Sunday existed for some time side by side, as separate inst.i.tutions; Sunday being a day of united worship, while the Sabbath supplied retirement from the world.

Gentiles kept Sunday only; but gradually there were incorporated into it all the spiritual elements of the Sabbath. In this point, as in all others, the underlying eternal meaning of the Law was recoined and reissued by Christianity; no jot or t.i.ttle of its spirit pa.s.sed away.

In "The English Sunday,"[4] by Canon Bernard, you will find a short sketch of the history of the day; its universal acceptance through the decree of Constantine, which organized the popular custom of a weekly holiday; the resistance of Luther and Calvin to any idea of being bound by the Jewish Sabbath; the Anglican idea of Church Services combined with the Book of Sports; the Puritan idea of a day of retirement from worldly business and amus.e.m.e.nt; and, finally, the gradual acceptance of this last idea by the English national conscience, so that High Churchmen, like Law and Nelson, echoed the Puritan ideal, and the average business Englishman accepted it as the right thing.

I am convinced that the vigour of the nation and the health of our own souls depends on keeping Sunday,--not only by going to Church, but by so arranging it that we get into an unworldly atmosphere, and have leisure for the thought and reading which develop our spiritual nature.

Such a Sunday is the development of the Fourth Commandment, keeping it in the spirit though not in the letter.

I am inclined to think that the Fourth Commandment is the most important of all: if that is faithfully observed--if we spend due time in G.o.d's Presence looking at things as He does, judging ourselves by His standard--then the rest of our lives must in time get raised to the level of those "golden hours;" we are as certain to improve as a person who regularly goes up into bracing air is certain to grow stronger.