This Department is conducted in the interest of Girls and Young Women, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any questions on the subject so far as possible. Correspondents should address Editor.
If you wish to form an association of the graduates of your school, do not hesitate to do so because you are few in number, or because the school is not very well known. Some of the best work is done in obscure schools, and our love for our own girls and our own teachers has nothing whatever to do with the fame of the institution.
In beginning send word to all the girls who have ever been graduated from your school to attend, if they can, the Commencement exercises of this season. It will be easy when all are together to plan for future reunions. These may be held monthly, quarterly, or annually. If you form an Alumnæ Association, you will require a president, a secretary and treasurer, and an executive committee to carry forward the work which I hope you will have in mind, as well as to do your planning for pleasure.
This work may lie in any one of several directions. You may like, if you are rich, or have many well-to-do friends, to endow a chair of history or poetry in your school, or to found a scholarship, on which some fortunate girl, not able to pay for her own tuition, may always be educated. If you cannot raise much money, you may still be able each year to do something for your school—add books to its library, or a beautiful picture to its drawing-room, or in some way show your attachment to the dear old school.
On the other hand, if you haven't any definite work which you wish to do, you will keep up the school friendships and the pleasant recollections, which will day by day and year by year grow more precious, by the simple plan of meeting from time to time. Perhaps you will have a luncheon when you meet, and in order to provide funds for this you may each contribute a dollar or two dollars, as may be, and let one or two of your number act as a committee to provide the feast. At this the president will preside. You will place the guest of honor at her right, and the next in importance at her left. A card with each girl's name will be at every plate, and the table will be adorned with flowers. If as a school you have a special color, or a special flower, you will choose your decorations with that in view.
A good menu at this season would be the following: