Are you ready for real work? Can you take criticism or contradiction with a perfectly unruffled face and voice? Do you overcome your hindrances to usefulness at home, e.g. do you improve your handwriting so that your mother need not be ashamed to let you write for her? Do you help her tactfully and consentingly—the only help which rests people—or do you argue each point, so that it is far less trouble to do the thing twice over than to ask you? Are you prompt and alert in your movements, or do you indulge in that exasperating slowness, which some girls seem to consider quite a charm? Do you wait till the last minute, and then leisurely put on your things, with serene unconsciousness of the fret it is to every one's temper? If you want to see how unthoroughbred such a habit looks, read "Shirley," and study the character of Mr. Donne, the curate, who flatters himself that he enhances his importance by keeping the others waiting while he complacently finishes his tea.
Do you lay down the law. Do you allow yourself the tone of positive, almost dictatorial, assertion, which, coming from a girl, so sets an old-fashioned person's teeth on edge; or do you try to speak in the tentative, suggestive, inquiring tone, which is not only required by good manners, but is also a real help to humility of mind?
Do not say that these things are too simple and obvious to bear on your future work for the Relief of Man's Estate,—on Work with a big W. They are of the very essence of the formation of character, and your Work for others stands or falls by that.
The sanctifying influence of home-life lies mainly in its necessity, its obviousness,—in the fact of our remaining unprofitable servants after we have done our best. It is the school in which we are placed by God; we are bound to learn its lessons, and do its duties: there is no halo of self-sacrifice around it—the position rightly viewed gives us no choice. "I must,"—there is the sting, the irksomeness to us. We can submit cheerfully to our self-chosen Pope, and seem most sweet-tempered in bearing criticism and in doing tiresome duties,—the "I must" is not there. This wilful obedience is worth just nothing as discipline of character, compared with obedience to our lawful authorities; "Ay, there's the rub!"
Is not this very necessity in home life—this "I must"—just the thing which makes it akin to our Lord's life? Is there not in that Holiest Life a continual undercurrent of "I must"? His earthly life was a course of obedience, not a succession of self-willed efforts; its keynote was, "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?"
Esprit de Corps.
While I was away, I was present at a discussion on Esprit de Corps, and whether it was a good thing in girls' schools. What is esprit de corps?—The feeling that we are one of a large body of which we are proud. A soldier has it when he is proud of his regiment and is proud of belonging to it.
Now, is it good or bad for girls to have a strong feeling of this kind for their school? Many opinions were expressed at the meeting. My opinion is that it is a good thing—a necessary thing. But every virtue has its defect—if you overdo it, you fall into some fault; if you are too amiable, you may fall into being untruthful; and so with esprit de corps. I want you to have it, but I want you to be on your guard against some faults connected with it. I want our School to be full of it, but I want it to be of the best kind.
One fault very common in members of any large body is conceit. The feeling of belonging to a fine institution swallows up personal humility. You may be more occupied with the importance and dignity of your position, than ready to take home the idea that you yourself are a very faulty member! Margaret Fuller, a clever American friend of Emerson's, said, "There are so many things in the universe more interesting than my individual faults, that I really cannot stay to dwell on them." There is one form of conceit—or rather of self-satisfaction—to which schoolgirls are liable: they know they are living up to the average standard imposed by public opinion and esprit de corps, and they are satisfied with this, instead of trying to live up to their own best self. It is quite possible for any straightforward, honourable girl to live up to the average standard, and it is very comfortable to feel satisfied. But if you are trying to live up to the highest standard you know, you will not be comfortable—you will be always profoundly discontented with yourself, but it will be the Divine discontent Plato speaks of. You will be always failing, but it will be failing nobly—the failure of one who loves the highest, and is content to follow the highest, even though it be afar off. In King Arthur's court, the noblest knights went in search of the Sangreal—scarcely one could succeed in his quest, but it was nobler to aim high and fail than to be content with "low successes." We, too, ought each to follow the quest of the Sangreal, that is, to seek to be perfect, and then there is no room for self-satisfaction, far less conceit.
Sometimes esprit de corps not only makes us think a great deal of our own merits, but it also makes us blind to the merits of others. We need only put this into words, to see its smallness, but it often happens. Some people's patriotism seems to consist in despising the French and Germans. No one values true patriotism more than I do, but I detest "insularity"—that insufferable feeling of superiority of which English people are so often guilty. We ought to love our own school, or hall, or college; but it is a poor, low kind of love if it means despising other schools, or halls, or colleges, picking holes in them, refusing to learn from them, and being mere partisans. A soldier would be proud of his own regiment, and think it the finest there was, but he would admire the splendid history that other regiments could boast, and he would be glad and proud of the fact that there were so many fine ones. All good schools belong to a splendid brotherhood—a grand army—and they should be proud of each other. We can be just as true and loyal to our own, and yet have wide feelings. Esprit de corps—loyalty to our body—is a very splendid thing, and we degrade it when we turn it into mere clannishness; it ought to bring out our love for all that is good, just as love for home ought to make us love outsiders better.