The last extract is from a girl of seventeen, who, after describing her life, adds:—“I have ordered, may I say, our Association papers.... I must now close, longing to have one of your ever welcome letters soon.”
Surely there is no need to question the usefulness of the Association. These letters tell their own story by the simple, unaffected manner in which the writers assert that they have received positive benefits through linking themselves to it.
It will not be out of place to add a word or two as to the objects of the Y.W.C.A. for the benefit of those who have not seen the article referred to, besides other notices which have appeared from time to time.
The products of nature are not valued in proportion to their size or outward appearance, but more generally with reference to their use for the sustaining of life. The spreading cedar is far more magnificent and beautiful than the little potato-plant, and yet the cedar would be less missed than the potato.
The rosy-cheeked, shining apple makes more show than the little seed-corn, and yet there is no comparison as to which we could most easily spare. The apple we could dispense with; it would be difficult to dispense with what has been aptly termed “the staff of life.”
So with the Y.W.C.A. It does not assume to itself a great place in the way of presenting you with a magnificent appearance; but nevertheless its work is sure, and it is steadily making its influence felt through the length and breadth of the land. If anyone should wish to feel this influence, they must join the Association, follow it in its work, watch its effects, and the verdict must be favourable.
The Association is writing its name ineffaceably in the changed lives, enlarged hopes, higher aims, and nobler motives of many of its members.
Another point sometimes forgotten is that the object of the Association is to build up character, remembering that “it depends upon what we are as to what the world is like.”
“Dark is the world to thee;
Thyself the reason why.”