Vesper Talks to Girls

by Laura A. Knott

Let us assume, for a moment, that you are one of the many young women who long for some form of service that will exercise all your higher powers and faculties. Let us suppose, further, that you are free from those family responsibilities which would debar you from gratifying that longing. The craving for useful activity is not something to be stifled. It is the result of one of the greatest spiritual laws of life—the law that action, progress, achievement are the essentials of a happy and contented life. The soul wearies of the most beautiful surroundings when deprived of happy activity. One of the supreme joys of life is the joy of doing. To feel all one’s powers stretched to the utmost, and to realize that through the exercise of those powers one is making a real contribution to the world’s welfare, is the source of the deepest satisfaction the human heart can know. Teas and balls and all the pleasures of social intercourse have their place, but you cannot live on them. They cannot feed the sources of the soul’s power.

“Do something worth living for, worth dying for. Do something to show that you have a heart and a mind and a soul within you,” were some of the ringing words of Dean Stanley. Half a century ago the world’s emphatic disapproval of the woman who engaged in any activity outside of the home was enough to clip the wings of all but the most daring. How difficult it is for us to realize now the scorn and contumely which were heaped upon noble Florence Nightingale, when she announced that she intended to become a nurse and to establish training-schools where other young women might study that self-sacrificing profession! It was called unwomanly, degrading.

The modern Florence Nightingale finds a world eager to welcome her services, ready to recompense her for them, and glad to honor her. The young woman of to-day finds little in the world’s attitude to debar her from entering upon any form of service which attracts her. Thus have our ideas regarding women and their rights and privileges progressed in the last fifty or sixty years. We recognize that in some respects men and women are not as different as we once thought. The craving for self-realization and the joy of achievement are neither distinctly masculine nor distinctly feminine. They are simply human.

Find, then, an opening somewhere. If you cannot secure the precise thing you want to do, take what you can secure and make a success of it. Learn to do something well, and if possible let it be something for which the world is glad to compensate you. Mrs. Palmer believed that every girl, rich or poor, should acquire the ability to earn a living for herself and others in case of need. She insisted upon “the importance of giving every girl, no matter what her present circumstances, a special training in some one thing by which she can render society service, not amateur, but of an expert sort, and service, too, for which it will be willing to pay a price.”

The third girl whom I have in mind is the one whose presence in the home is indispensable, who must put out of mind all forms of remunerative labor, and, therefore, must find her chief success and happiness in ministering to the needs of loved ones. It may be that the mother upon whom you once leaned so heavily must now lean on you. Or perhaps the mother is no longer in the home and you have the high privilege of taking her place. What better opportunity for growth than this could any girl ask? We cannot choose our duties. Life makes them for us, and if we shirk them, there is no happiness and no success for us. If you make it the rule of your life to escape from what is burdensome and to choose the path of pleasure, happiness will not come anyway and you will lack the satisfaction of knowing that you have done right.

Yet even the girl who remains in her own home can usually spare time and strength for some other service, and it is best that she should. Her horizon is thereby widened, new friends that are worth while are made, and she is given an opportunity for growth in a different direction from that supplied by home duties. I have known many girls who have been remarkably successful in combining the two—work inside and work outside of the home. Living in your own home and helping to make it a center of attraction, hospitality, and fine influence, you are in a peculiarly fortunate position for rendering a form of service which is needed in every city and every village throughout the country. Many young women so situated have done efficient work in connection with the Young Women’s Christian Association or with girls’ clubs. Church work is a field that is open to all. In women’s clubs, literary clubs, and organizations for civic betterment many find avenues for useful activity, while others find satisfaction in charity work, hospital work, or other forms of benevolent service.

The young woman who seeks to give her service is often surprised at her inability to find just what she likes or to perform it well when found. This is because the untrained worker is always at a disadvantage. It is far easier to fill a humble position on a small salary, where the duties are definite and must be performed whether one will or no. In such a position, if one is earnest and industrious, one must necessarily grow. With all forms of unpaid labor, the danger is lest one may not take one’s work seriously enough, and may not hold one’s self closely to responsibility. Any trained worker who depends upon volunteer assistants, as is often the case in girls’ clubs and the Young Women’s Christian Association, can tell you how rarely she finds an unpaid helper upon whom she can depend. If you select some such work, even though you can give it but a few hours a week, and if you see fit to throw yourself as enthusiastically and earnestly into it as if you were taking a position as teacher or librarian or stenographer, there can be no doubt that you will find in it happiness and success.

When you think of the thousands of homeless women wage-earners, you can realize how thankful every girl should be who has a good home. Surely there is, for most girls, some midway ground between starting out as independently as their brothers do, to carve out their own career, and stagnating at home. One of the chief results of the higher education of women should be that they do much uncompensated labor which is now done badly or not at all. There is a rich field for women of the well-to-do classes who do not need to earn their living, and this field is growing larger every year. There is little excuse for idle hands or empty hearts or purposeless lives. Some have eyes to see, yet they see not. If you belong to the class of girls to which I have referred, ask yourself what some more eager and purposeful person in your place would find to do.

It is a splendid thing to live in the twentieth century. The young people who enter life these days are going out into the busiest world there has ever been. Never has the need of strong, capable, intelligent women been so great. The bond of fellowship which unites each one of us to the whole human race is to be recognized in the future as never before. Women of the future are to demand of themselves almost all that was demanded of the women of the past and much more, and they will be equal to the demands because of more highly trained intelligence.

The greatest temptation of the average young woman to-day in our better classes of society is to listen too willingly to the winsome voice of pleasure. I do not mean wrong kinds of pleasure; I mean those that are in themselves harmless. Nor do I mean that it is desirable that youth should lose any of its natural joy and gladness. The world can ill spare any of that. But the continual giving-up of ourselves to things that leave no lasting impress for good, and that do not lift us above ourselves, robs us of time and strength that should be given to the main business of life.