The right sort of leisure ought to help as much in the development of the girl as the right sort of work. If it is leisure worthy the name, it will bring refreshment; it will not leave one physically and mentally jaded. Neither mind nor body should ever be exhausted because of the way in which freedom has been used. Leisure is as important to work as work is to leisure. A person who has not worked cannot appreciate freedom, while the one who has had no leisure is not best fitted for work. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy;" it is just as true that it makes Jill a dull girl. The girl who works all the time, not realizing the importance of free moments, becomes fagged in body and mind. She is a tool that is dull, and would do well to remember that even a machine is better for an occasional rest.
Some mistaken ideas about leisure have grown up, making it difficult to say anything on this subject without being misunderstood. Stories—whole books of them—about "spreads" and more or less lawless escapades in school and college, have given girls and other people, too, the impression that this is the sort of thing school leisure is. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Midnight feasts may occur in school, and most of us, unless we are too good to be average girls, have taken part in them. But such stories are vicious, for they misrepresent the life by suggesting that eating inferior and unwholesome food is the real freedom most girls desire. There is something repulsive in the very thought. Feasts that leave a girl with a coated tongue and a dull head and Monday "blues" do not fairly represent school or college leisure. Good times that interfere with good work have no place in ideally free hours. But, indeed, the odours from the chafing-dishes do suggest that some of the girls are trying to put into literal execution the wish of a great German professor in Oxford. The professor, eager to try a dish he saw on the hotel bill of fare, but with his English and German verbs not quite disentangled, said to the waiter, "Hereafter I vish to become a Velsh Rabbit." Perhaps becoming a Welsh rarebit represents the height of some girls' ideals, but this is hard to believe.
The possession of leisure depends to a great extent upon the will power. The girl who has never learned to say "No," who has no power of selection, cannot expect to have any hours for her own use. She is quarry for every idle suggestion, every social engagement, every executive "job" which pursues her. The girl who engages all her time socially cannot have a sense of leisure, for she turns her playtime into but another schedule, to be met as inexorably as her academic courses. Her days become a formidable array of "dates," often stretching ahead for weeks. Even if girls are not determined to have it for themselves, they should give to others some opportunity for freedom, and should respect their possible desire for solitude. The girl who engages or annexes every particle of time, her own or that of some one else with whom she comes in contact, is making leisure an impossibility. The girl who leaves no margin cannot hope for even the spirit of freedom.
Many students excuse themselves for much executive work in school and college on the ground that it is done in their leisure. That girl is a goose who allows herself through any sense of self-importance, or irreplaceable usefulness, to be so involved in executive work that all other aspects of her school life are slighted. If she refuses to be swamped by such "jobs" she can have the happiness of reflecting that probably some girls who need the training far more than she does are doing the work. To every girl will come the opportunity right along for "managing"; club and social work will bring it, and a good-sized family will bring it as nothing else can. But school leisure she will not have again. The whole aim of the school is to enrich the lives of its students, and it knows all too well that that student who does not keep for herself the leisure upon which body and mind and soul must feed is indeed poor.
There is one way in which leisure is very generally misspent in school—and alas, outside, too!—not in managing one's own affairs, but in managing and discussing the affairs of others. At such times the remarks may be superlatively pleasant, but they are more often superlatively disagreeable. It may be said with truthfulness that they are almost never moderate or just. Everything is all black or all white, with no gray. It makes one think of the little girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead:
"When she was good, she was very, very good,
And when she was bad, she was horrid."
But, alas! the poor wretches discussed are not allowed even the natural and somewhat happy human alternation between badness and goodness. No, indeed, they are monsters of a desperate character—they may at the moment be broken-heartedly conscious of their own faults—or they are shining six-winged angels. And, woe! this sort of thing comes almost as hard upon the angels. They can't endure it; so much goodness breaks down their wing arches, and the glorious ones crumple together like tissue-paper.
And upon the girls busily engaged in creating angels of loveliness and gargoyles of ugliness, this sort of conversation works havoc. It does not invigorate them, it does not inspire them. It belittles their minds—thank fortune, that making kindling wood of the characters of other people does do this!—and stunts their finer feelings. This sin, that they "do by two and two," they pay for one by one. Gentle and considerate feelings are lost, time is wasted, a vicious habit,—almost no habit is more vicious,—is acquired. Such gossip can never become a pure enjoyment; it remains at the best an ignoble, discreditable excitement. Rolling these sweet morsels under their tongues, a taste for ill-natured or exaggerated comment fixes itself in their mouths. Even if they have consciences that, like good mothers, will occasionally wash their mouths out with soap, they retain the disturbing memory of unkind, coarse, or foolish words.
Yet school should be the last place in which to indulge in idle talk. Such indulgence is against all the idealism of student life. Idle or meddlesome talk never helps any one, either the one who talks or the one who is discussed. If you have anything to say about other people, and if going to them will help you, the only friendly thing to do—it is not an easy thing—is to speak to the people concerned. If we really knew how to put ourselves in other people's places, no unkind, unfriendly words would ever be spoken again. There would be things hard to bear said—rebuke or reproof are never easy to receive—but nothing unfriendly. Think how idle, ill-natured talk flows around the world, and then think what a different world it would be if there were none of it! It is to human life what the blights, the scales, the insect pests are to tree and flower. Fortunately, as people grow older they come to think themselves less infallible, and as they grow wiser they become more tender and more lenient in their judgments.
In companionship whose leisure interests are good there is a sense of freedom filled full and running over, of minds and hearts doubly rich, of good times doubly jolly. But on the whole, girls have too little absolute solitude; there is scarcely a girl in twenty, except the "dig," who is alone at all. One trouble with dormitory school life is that it fosters leisure-wasting and time-wasting "gang" habits. A girl so surrounded never wants to be alone a moment, either indoors or out. With such, the blessing and blessedness of solitude should be learned, for solitude rightly used makes strong men and women.